HEALTH AND SCIENCE HIGHLIGHTS

September 2, 2022 (San Diego's East County) -- Our Health and Science Highlights provide cutting edge news that could impact your health and our future.

HEALTH

• Why has polio been found in New York, London and Jerusalem? (CBS News)
• Firefighters told to wear protective gear less to limit exposure to 'forever chemicals' linked to cancer (NBC)
• EPA to Designate Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' as Hazardous Substances (Newsmax)
• Young adults are using marijuana and hallucinogens at the highest rates on record (NPR)
• Q&A: The new COVID vaccine booster is coming. Should you get it?  (San Jose Mercury News)
• Hearing loss is a direct link to dementia. Easier access to hearing aids could help( NPR)
• Dogs getting sick with parvo-like illness in northern Michigan, dying within 3 days(MSN)

SCIENCE AND TECH

• Soon electric vehicles could charge faster than your iPhone (Washington Post)
• Elon Musk's SpaceX and T-Mobile to link satellites to mobile phones, 'eliminating dead zones worldwide' (Business Insider)
• Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition (Newsweek)
• The world's first hydrogen-powered passenger trains are here(CNN)

For excerpts or links to full stories, click “read more” and scroll down.

HEALTH

Why has polio been found in New York, London and Jerusalem? (CBS News)

For years, global health officials have used billions of drops of an oral vaccine in a remarkably effective campaign aimed at wiping out polio in its last remaining strongholds — typically, poor, politically unstable corners of the world. Now, in a surprising twist in the decades-long effort to eradicate the virus, authorities in Jerusalem, New York and London have discovered evidence that polio is spreading there.

Firefighters told to wear protective gear less to limit exposure to 'forever chemicals' linked to cancer (NBC)

A firefighters union and a chiefs association both advise firefighters to reduce their exposure to PFAS by donning protective gear only when necessary.

EPA to Designate Toxic 'Forever Chemicals' as Hazardous Substances (Newsmax)

The Environmental Protection Agency is designating some toxic industrial compounds used in cookware, carpets and firefighting foams as hazardous substances under the so-called Superfund law.The designation means that releases of long-lasting chemicals known as PFOA and PFOS that meet or exceed a certain quantity would have to be reported to federal, state or tribal officials.

Young adults are using marijuana and hallucinogens at the highest rates on record (NPR)

Young adults are using more weed and hallucinogens than ever.  The amount of people from ages 19 to 30 who reported using one or the other are at the highest rates since 1988, when the National Institutes of Health first began the survey.

Q&A: The new COVID vaccine booster is coming. Should you get it?  (San Jose Mercury News)

The COVID vaccine is getting an upgrade. For two years, we’ve been protecting ourselves with a vaccine modeled after the original version of the virus. But soon after Labor Day, a new booster – call it vaccine 2.0 — will be available to every adult in the U.S. 

Hearing loss is a direct link to dementia. Easier access to hearing aids could help( NPR)

Ayesha Rascoe speaks with Dr. Frank Lin of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health about the link between hearing loss and dementia, and how over-the-counter hearing aids may help.

Dogs getting sick with parvo-like illness in northern Michigan, dying within 3 days(MSN)

Similar to canine parvovirus in symptoms, an unidentified illness has been sickening and killing dozens of dogs in Michigan in the past month.

SCIENCE AND TECH

Soon electric vehicles could charge faster than your iPhone(Washington Post)

If perfected, the method could charge an electric vehicle’s battery 90 percent within ten minutes, solving an issue skeptics have long had about electric vehicles.

Elon Musk's SpaceX and T-Mobile to link satellites to mobile phones, 'eliminating dead zones worldwide' (Business Insider)

Elon Musk's SpaceX and T-Mobile are teaming up to offer mobile users phone service via Starlink satellites, the companies announced on Thursday. The service will be particularly useful in areas with no cell coverage, particularly when there's an emergency, SpaceX founder Musk said at an event in Texas. SpaceX and T-Mobile said in a press release that the new plan would "provide near complete coverage in most places in the US — even in many of the most remote locations previously unreachable by traditional cell signals." The service is expected to launch next year …

Nuclear Fusion Breakthrough Confirmed: California Team Achieved Ignition (Newsweek)

A major breakthrough in nuclear fusion has been confirmed a year after it was achieved at a laboratory in California. Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's (LLNL's) National Ignition Facility (NIF) recorded the first case of ignition on August 8, 2021, the results of which have now been published in three peer-reviewed papers.. Ignition during a fusion reaction essentially means that the reaction itself produced enough energy to be self-sustaining, which would be necessary in the use of fusion to generate electricity. If we could harness this reaction to generate electricity, it would be one of the most efficient and least polluting sources of energy possible. No fossil fuels would be required as the only fuel would be hydrogen, and the only by-product would be helium, which we use in industry and are actually in short supply of.

The world's first hydrogen-powered passenger trains are here(CNN)

The future of environmentally friendly travel might just be here -- and it's Germany that's leading the charge, with the first ever rail line to be entirely run on hydrogen-powered trains, starting from Wednesday.