• Health

Ticks Target People as Climate Warms

• climate change
• disease
• ticks
• vector disease

by Natasha Lasky, ODP Contributing Writer A new study presented during the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene Annual Meeting revealed that ticks carrying the bacterium that causes Rocky Mountain spotted fever are more than twice as likely to feed on humans rather than dogs when temperatures rise.  Why This Matters: Ticks are thriving […]

• Animals

Mink Farm Die-Off Due to COVID

• #COVID19
• animals
• disease
• mink
• outbreaks

NBC News reported that more than 10,000 minks in Utah mink “farms” have contracted COVID and died, forcing the state to close them and begin an investigation into what caused the outbreak. 

Why This Matters:  The fact that the virus spread from humans to the animals is alarming, but fortunately the risk of it spreading from minks to humans is low, according to the Utah State Veterinarian and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

• Ocean

Freshwater Mussels Face Potential Pandemic of Their Own

• COVID-19
• disease
• ecosystem
• mussels
• pandemic
• wildlife

While humans face COVID-19, freshwater mussels could be facing a pandemic of their own. Researchers have found a novel densovirus, dubbed “Mussel-bola,” that may be responsible for killing 80,000 mussels in a 650 foot stretch of the Clinch River in Virginia over only 2 years.

Why This Matters: Mussels serve as a proverbial canary in the coalmine for freshwater ecosystems.

• Climate Change

Flesh-Eating Bacteria On Rise Due To Climate Change

• bacteria
• brackish
• disease
• infection
• ocean
• warming

This summer the number of cases of people who are made ill by a flesh-eating bacteria called vibrio vulnificus that stops blood circulation, causing muscle tissue to die and skin to decay is increasing around the country — and the cause is believed to be climate change. 

• Food

Climate change increases risk of food-borne illness

• climate change
• disease
• food
• food safety
• foodborne illness
• public health
• WHO

As climate change continues to warm our planet, the World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that governments around the world must take increased precaution to ensure food safety–something that has not received enough political attention. U.N. agencies and the African Union recently met in Ethiopia at an international food safety conference and made the following statement: […]

• Forests

Bioengineering may save America’s forests

• bioengineering
• climate change
• disease
• Forests
• tree disease
• trees

Scientific American recently reported that U.S. forests are among the most vulnerable in the world to predators and disease, according to a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. The report also explained that biotechnology has the potential to be a part of the solution in protecting forest trees against destructive pest and disease outbreaks,