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Why a bill to regulate California warehouse development is generating sweeping opposition

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Saturday, September 7, 2024

Xochitl Pedraza moved to San Bernardino County eight years ago. After three decades of city living, unincorporated Bloomington offered a rural community where she could buy an acre of land and raise chickens.But Pedraza’s neighborhood has become more industrial in recent years, as developers have converted large swaths of property along the 10 Freeway into a logistics corridor for e-commerce, connecting goods shipped into Southern California ports with online shoppers across the nation. While proponents of the developments say they bring jobs and infrastructure improvements, many residents living in their shadow lament the pollution, traffic and neighborhood disruption.There was already an avocado distribution center across the street from Pedraza’s home; now there’s an Amazon fulfillment center on the corner that brings “trucks after trucks after trucks,” Pedraza said. The incessant beeping and honking penetrate her soundproof windows.She and her 8-year-old grandson suffer from dry eyes, nasal congestion and a chronic dry cough — symptoms she attributes to dust from warehouse construction and the region’s ozone pollution. A bill on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk would establish siting and design standards for industrial warehouses that, according to supporters, would better protect the health of residents such as Pedraza. Assemblymember Juan Carrillo (D-Palmdale), who co-authored the legislation, has described the measure as a “very delicate compromise” that resulted from lengthy negotiations among a working group that included labor, health, environmental and business representatives. Nonetheless, the bill has generated staunch opposition from a diverse range of environmental, community and civic groups statewide who object to the secrecy in which the bill was crafted in the final days of session and who say it fails to hold warehouse developers to higher standards.Beginning in 2026, AB 98 would prohibit cities and counties from approving new or expanded distribution centers unless they meet specified standards. New warehouse developments would need to be located on major thoroughfares or local roads that mainly serve commercial uses. And warehouse sites would need to be set back several hundred feet from so-called “sensitive sites” such as homes, schools and healthcare facilities. Additionally, if a developer demolishes housing to make way for a warehouse, the bill would require two new units of affordable housing for each unit that is destroyed. The developer would have to provide displaced tenants with 12 months’ rent.Some regulations would need to be enacted in the state’s “warehouse concentration region” — Riverside and San Bernardino counties and a dozen Inland Empire cities — by 2026, two years before the rest of the state.While some labor groups support the bill, it is opposed by a host of environmental, business and community organizations. Several cities also opposed the legislation, which according to an analysis by the Senate Appropriations Committee, requires general plan updates that could result in one-time costs for cities and counties ranging from tens of millions to potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. Environmental advocates are especially concerned about the bill’s setback requirements for projects involving warehouses 250,000 square feet and larger that are within 900 feet of homes, schools, parks or healthcare facilities.In those cases, the bill would require that truck loading bays are located at least 300 feet from the property line in areas zoned for industrial use; and 500 feet from the property line in areas not zoned for industrial use. Warehouses would also need to comply with design and energy efficiency standards.Pedraza, the Bloomington resident, said the distances laid out aren’t enough buffer. The rules also don’t take into account that truck traffic and pollution issues are magnified in overburdened communities such as Bloomington, she said.“The whole community is surrounded by warehouses now,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how far it is ... they still affect us.”The bill would simply enshrine current warehouse development practices into law and undermine local efforts to advocate for the much bigger setbacks recommended by state agencies, said Andrea Vidaurre, senior policy analyst for the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice in San Bernardino.In a 2022 report on best practices for warehouse projects under the state’s environmental laws, the state attorney general’s office recommends locating warehouse facilities so that their property lines are at least 1,000 feet from the property lines of sensitive sites such as homes and schools. It cites the state Air Resources Board, which in 2005 estimated an 80% drop-off in pollutant concentrations at approximately 1,000 feet from a distribution center.“If this is signed into law, we’re basically saying, ‘Business as usual is okay; let’s keep building it like this,’” Vidaurre said. “We’re going to continue to see warehouses being put across the street from homes and schools, because it will be OK with the law.”Assemblymember Eloise Gomez Reyes (D-Colton), another co-author, acknowledged during a Senate committee hearing last week that AB 98 preserves jobs and enacts warehouse standards but is “not the perfect bill.”She introduced a bill earlier this year that said warehouses could be sited within 1,000 feet of schools, homes, healthcare facilities and other sensitive sites only if they included a minimum setback of 750 feet and adopted specific mitigation measures. The bill was held in its first committee.Gomez Reyes said the distance requirements in AB 98 could serve as a floor.“I do not believe the sensitive receptor setbacks in this bill adequately protect our most vulnerable communities,” Gomez Reyes said during the hearing. “It is important to note that these, however, are only a minimum. And nothing in this bill stops cities or advocates from pushing to put in place stronger standards with local cities and counties.”Karla Cervantes launched the Mead Valley Coalition for Clean Air earlier this year to fight the proliferation of warehouses in her unincorporated community of about 20,500 people in Riverside County. She said developers aren’t going to agree to setbacks larger than what’s required in the legislation. Riverside County already recommends warehouses be designed so there’s at least 300 feet between the property line of a sensitive site and the nearest dock door. While it is “very rare” for developers to agree to a larger setback, she said, they will sometimes offer larger landscaped buffers to obscure people’s view of facilities.If AB 98 becomes law, she said, “it’s going to be even harder for us to try to push for better.”Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill.This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

A bill on Gov. Gavin Newsom's desk would set standards for industrial warehouse development near homes and schools. Opponents say those standards are weak and won't lessen health risks for residents living in the shadow of e-commerce.

Xochitl Pedraza moved to San Bernardino County eight years ago. After three decades of city living, unincorporated Bloomington offered a rural community where she could buy an acre of land and raise chickens.

But Pedraza’s neighborhood has become more industrial in recent years, as developers have converted large swaths of property along the 10 Freeway into a logistics corridor for e-commerce, connecting goods shipped into Southern California ports with online shoppers across the nation. While proponents of the developments say they bring jobs and infrastructure improvements, many residents living in their shadow lament the pollution, traffic and neighborhood disruption.

There was already an avocado distribution center across the street from Pedraza’s home; now there’s an Amazon fulfillment center on the corner that brings “trucks after trucks after trucks,” Pedraza said. The incessant beeping and honking penetrate her soundproof windows.

She and her 8-year-old grandson suffer from dry eyes, nasal congestion and a chronic dry cough — symptoms she attributes to dust from warehouse construction and the region’s ozone pollution.

A bill on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk would establish siting and design standards for industrial warehouses that, according to supporters, would better protect the health of residents such as Pedraza.

Assemblymember Juan Carrillo (D-Palmdale), who co-authored the legislation, has described the measure as a “very delicate compromise” that resulted from lengthy negotiations among a working group that included labor, health, environmental and business representatives.

Nonetheless, the bill has generated staunch opposition from a diverse range of environmental, community and civic groups statewide who object to the secrecy in which the bill was crafted in the final days of session and who say it fails to hold warehouse developers to higher standards.

Beginning in 2026, AB 98 would prohibit cities and counties from approving new or expanded distribution centers unless they meet specified standards. New warehouse developments would need to be located on major thoroughfares or local roads that mainly serve commercial uses. And warehouse sites would need to be set back several hundred feet from so-called “sensitive sites” such as homes, schools and healthcare facilities.

Additionally, if a developer demolishes housing to make way for a warehouse, the bill would require two new units of affordable housing for each unit that is destroyed. The developer would have to provide displaced tenants with 12 months’ rent.

Some regulations would need to be enacted in the state’s “warehouse concentration region” — Riverside and San Bernardino counties and a dozen Inland Empire cities — by 2026, two years before the rest of the state.

While some labor groups support the bill, it is opposed by a host of environmental, business and community organizations. Several cities also opposed the legislation, which according to an analysis by the Senate Appropriations Committee, requires general plan updates that could result in one-time costs for cities and counties ranging from tens of millions to potentially hundreds of millions of dollars.

Environmental advocates are especially concerned about the bill’s setback requirements for projects involving warehouses 250,000 square feet and larger that are within 900 feet of homes, schools, parks or healthcare facilities.

In those cases, the bill would require that truck loading bays are located at least 300 feet from the property line in areas zoned for industrial use; and 500 feet from the property line in areas not zoned for industrial use. Warehouses would also need to comply with design and energy efficiency standards.

Pedraza, the Bloomington resident, said the distances laid out aren’t enough buffer. The rules also don’t take into account that truck traffic and pollution issues are magnified in overburdened communities such as Bloomington, she said.

“The whole community is surrounded by warehouses now,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how far it is ... they still affect us.”

The bill would simply enshrine current warehouse development practices into law and undermine local efforts to advocate for the much bigger setbacks recommended by state agencies, said Andrea Vidaurre, senior policy analyst for the People’s Collective for Environmental Justice in San Bernardino.

In a 2022 report on best practices for warehouse projects under the state’s environmental laws, the state attorney general’s office recommends locating warehouse facilities so that their property lines are at least 1,000 feet from the property lines of sensitive sites such as homes and schools. It cites the state Air Resources Board, which in 2005 estimated an 80% drop-off in pollutant concentrations at approximately 1,000 feet from a distribution center.

“If this is signed into law, we’re basically saying, ‘Business as usual is okay; let’s keep building it like this,’” Vidaurre said. “We’re going to continue to see warehouses being put across the street from homes and schools, because it will be OK with the law.”

Assemblymember Eloise Gomez Reyes (D-Colton), another co-author, acknowledged during a Senate committee hearing last week that AB 98 preserves jobs and enacts warehouse standards but is “not the perfect bill.”

She introduced a bill earlier this year that said warehouses could be sited within 1,000 feet of schools, homes, healthcare facilities and other sensitive sites only if they included a minimum setback of 750 feet and adopted specific mitigation measures. The bill was held in its first committee.

Gomez Reyes said the distance requirements in AB 98 could serve as a floor.

“I do not believe the sensitive receptor setbacks in this bill adequately protect our most vulnerable communities,” Gomez Reyes said during the hearing. “It is important to note that these, however, are only a minimum. And nothing in this bill stops cities or advocates from pushing to put in place stronger standards with local cities and counties.”

Karla Cervantes launched the Mead Valley Coalition for Clean Air earlier this year to fight the proliferation of warehouses in her unincorporated community of about 20,500 people in Riverside County. She said developers aren’t going to agree to setbacks larger than what’s required in the legislation.

Riverside County already recommends warehouses be designed so there’s at least 300 feet between the property line of a sensitive site and the nearest dock door. While it is “very rare” for developers to agree to a larger setback, she said, they will sometimes offer larger landscaped buffers to obscure people’s view of facilities.

If AB 98 becomes law, she said, “it’s going to be even harder for us to try to push for better.”

Newsom has until Sept. 30 to sign or veto the bill.

This article is part of The Times’ equity reporting initiative, funded by the James Irvine Foundation, exploring the challenges facing low-income workers and the efforts being made to address California’s economic divide.

Read the full story here.
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Deep-learning model predicts how fruit flies form, cell by cell

The approach could apply to more complex tissues and organs, helping researchers to identify early signs of disease.

During early development, tissues and organs begin to bloom through the shifting, splitting, and growing of many thousands of cells.A team of MIT engineers has now developed a way to predict, minute by minute, how individual cells will fold, divide, and rearrange during a fruit fly’s earliest stage of growth. The new method may one day be applied to predict the development of more complex tissues, organs, and organisms. It could also help scientists identify cell patterns that correspond to early-onset diseases, such as asthma and cancer.In a study appearing today in the journal Nature Methods, the team presents a new deep-learning model that learns, then predicts, how certain geometric properties of individual cells will change as a fruit fly develops. The model records and tracks properties such as a cell’s position, and whether it is touching a neighboring cell at a given moment.The team applied the model to videos of developing fruit fly embryos, each of which starts as a cluster of about 5,000 cells. They found the model could predict, with 90 percent accuracy, how each of the 5,000 cells would fold, shift, and rearrange, minute by minute, during the first hour of development, as the embryo morphs from a smooth, uniform shape into more defined structures and features.“This very initial phase is known as gastrulation, which takes place over roughly one hour, when individual cells are rearranging on a time scale of minutes,” says study author Ming Guo, associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT. “By accurately modeling this early period, we can start to uncover how local cell interactions give rise to global tissues and organisms.”The researchers hope to apply the model to predict the cell-by-cell development in other species, such zebrafish and mice. Then, they can begin to identify patterns that are common across species. The team also envisions that the method could be used to discern early patterns of disease, such as in asthma. Lung tissue in people with asthma looks markedly different from healthy lung tissue. How asthma-prone tissue initially develops is an unknown process that the team’s new method could potentially reveal.“Asthmatic tissues show different cell dynamics when imaged live,” says co-author and MIT graduate student Haiqian Yang. “We envision that our model could capture these subtle dynamical differences and provide a more comprehensive representation of tissue behavior, potentially improving diagnostics or drug-screening assays.”The study’s co-authors are Markus Buehler, the McAfee Professor of Engineering in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; George Roy and Tomer Stern of the University of Michigan; and Anh Nguyen and Dapeng Bi of Northeastern University.Points and foamsScientists typically model how an embryo develops in one of two ways: as a point cloud, where each point represents an individual cell as point that moves over time; or as a “foam,” which represents individual cells as bubbles that shift and slide against each other, similar to the bubbles in shaving foam.Rather than choose between the two approaches, Guo and Yang embraced both.“There’s a debate about whether to model as a point cloud or a foam,” Yang says. “But both of them are essentially different ways of modeling the same underlying graph, which is an elegant way to represent living tissues. By combining these as one graph, we can highlight more structural information, like how cells are connected to each other as they rearrange over time.”At the heart of the new model is a “dual-graph” structure that represents a developing embryo as both moving points and bubbles. Through this dual representation, the researchers hoped to capture more detailed geometric properties of individual cells, such as the location of a cell’s nucleus, whether a cell is touching a neighboring cell, and whether it is folding or dividing at a given moment in time.As a proof of principle, the team trained the new model to “learn” how individual cells change over time during fruit fly gastrulation.“The overall shape of the fruit fly at this stage is roughly an ellipsoid, but there are gigantic dynamics going on at the surface during gastrulation,” Guo says. “It goes from entirely smooth to forming a number of folds at different angles. And we want to predict all of those dynamics, moment to moment, and cell by cell.”Where and whenFor their new study, the researchers applied the new model to high-quality videos of fruit fly gastrulation taken by their collaborators at the University of Michigan. The videos are one-hour recordings of developing fruit flies, taken at single-cell resolution. What’s more, the videos contain labels of individual cells’ edges and nuclei — data that are incredibly detailed and difficult to come by.“These videos are of extremely high quality,” Yang says. “This data is very rare, where you get submicron resolution of the whole 3D volume at a pretty fast frame rate.”The team trained the new model with data from three of four fruit fly embryo videos, such that the model might “learn” how individual cells interact and change as an embryo develops. They then tested the model on an entirely new fruit fly video, and found that it was able to predict with high accuracy how most of the embryo’s 5,000 cells changed from minute to minute.Specifically, the model could predict properties of individual cells, such as whether they will fold, divide, or continue sharing an edge with a neighboring cell, with about 90 percent accuracy.“We end up predicting not only whether these things will happen, but also when,” Guo says. “For instance, will this cell detach from this cell seven minutes from now, or eight? We can tell when that will happen.”The team believes that, in principle, the new model, and the dual-graph approach, should be able to predict the cell-by-cell development of other multiceullar systems, such as more complex species, and even some human tissues and organs. The limiting factor is the availability of high-quality video data.“From the model perspective, I think it’s ready,” Guo says. “The real bottleneck is the data. If we have good quality data of specific tissues, the model could be directly applied to predict the development of many more structures.”This work is supported, in part, by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

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Nature

Ignore the Influencers: Simple Showers Are Still Best

By Carole Tanzer Miller HealthDay ReporterSATURDAY, Dec. 13, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Listen to the influencers, skin-care specialists say, and your...

By Carole Tanzer Miller HealthDay ReporterSATURDAY, Dec. 13, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Listen to the influencers, skin-care specialists say, and your daily shower could do more harm than good."Your skin is a barrier," said Dr. Nicole Negbenebor, a dermatologic surgeon at University of Iowa Health Care, told The Associated Press. "So you want to treat it right, and then sometimes there can be too much of a good thing."If you’re double-cleansing, exfoliating, piling on scented body rubs and shower oils and spending a lot of time in the water, you’re probably going overboard, she and other skin-care experts agree.A daily shower with lukewarm water and hypoallergenic cleanser — preferably one that’s fragrance-free, and a slather of lotion or oil afterward are all you need, they say.Here’s a guide from dermatologists to sudsing up without getting carried away:Pay attention to time and temperature. Staying in the shower too long or cranking the temperature up too high can strip away natural oils your skin needs. The upshot: You’ll be dry and irritated.Pick the right soap. Choose one, dermatologists suggest, for sensitive skin and avoid antibacterial soaps, which can cause dryness. (Antibacterial soaps can, however, be beneficial for folks with hidradenitis suppurativa, an autoimmune condition that causes abscesses and boils on the skin, they point out.)Despite the influencers, double-cleansing isn’t necessary. No need, doctors say, to use oil-based cleansers to break down makeup and excess oil and then a water-based cleanser to remove any residue. And, they add, you sure don’t need to do that to your whole body."People overuse soap all the time," Dr. Olga Bunimovich, an assistant professor of dermatology at the University of Pittsburgh, told The AP. "You should not be soaping up all of your skin period." Instead, she advised, use soap to wash skin folds and your privates.Oil up. Once you’re out of the shower but still damp, an oil will lock in moisture that hydrates the skin, Negbenebor said. Just remember: Oil itself is a sealant, not a moisturizer.Don’t go overboard with exfoliating. Using a body scrub or loofah to remove dead cells is good for the skin, but not every day, especially if you have dry skin, acne or eczema. Using products that contain lactic or glycolic acid is a gentler way to exfoliate — but not all the time.While you’re being kind to your skin, think about the environment, too. Nearly 17% of U.S. indoor water use is in the shower, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Shorter showers are good for the earth — and a lukewarm one that lasts long enough to clean your body should be sufficient most of the time.The University of Nebraska-Lincoln has more about showering.SOURCE: The Associated Press, July 10, 2025Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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New method improves the reliability of statistical estimations

The technique can help scientists in economics, public health, and other fields understand whether to trust the results of their experiments.

Let’s say an environmental scientist is studying whether exposure to air pollution is associated with lower birth weights in a particular county.They might train a machine-learning model to estimate the magnitude of this association, since machine-learning methods are especially good at learning complex relationships.Standard machine-learning methods excel at making predictions and sometimes provide uncertainties, like confidence intervals, for these predictions. However, they generally don’t provide estimates or confidence intervals when determining whether two variables are related. Other methods have been developed specifically to address this association problem and provide confidence intervals. But, in spatial settings, MIT researchers found these confidence intervals can be completely off the mark.When variables like air pollution levels or precipitation change across different locations, common methods for generating confidence intervals may claim a high level of confidence when, in fact, the estimation completely failed to capture the actual value. These faulty confidence intervals can mislead the user into trusting a model that failed.After identifying this shortfall, the researchers developed a new method designed to generate valid confidence intervals for problems involving data that vary across space. In simulations and experiments with real data, their method was the only technique that consistently generated accurate confidence intervals.This work could help researchers in fields like environmental science, economics, and epidemiology better understand when to trust the results of certain experiments.“There are so many problems where people are interested in understanding phenomena over space, like weather or forest management. We’ve shown that, for this broad class of problems, there are more appropriate methods that can get us better performance, a better understanding of what is going on, and results that are more trustworthy,” says Tamara Broderick, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), a member of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) and the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, an affiliate of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), and senior author of this study.Broderick is joined on the paper by co-lead authors David R. Burt, a postdoc, and Renato Berlinghieri, an EECS graduate student; and Stephen Bates an assistant professor in EECS and member of LIDS. The research was recently presented at the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems.Invalid assumptionsSpatial association involves studying how a variable and a certain outcome are related over a geographic area. For instance, one might want to study how tree cover in the United States relates to elevation.To solve this type of problem, a scientist could gather observational data from many locations and use it to estimate the association at a different location where they do not have data.The MIT researchers realized that, in this case, existing methods often generate confidence intervals that are completely wrong. A model might say it is 95 percent confident its estimation captures the true relationship between tree cover and elevation, when it didn’t capture that relationship at all.After exploring this problem, the researchers determined that the assumptions these confidence interval methods rely on don’t hold up when data vary spatially.Assumptions are like rules that must be followed to ensure results of a statistical analysis are valid. Common methods for generating confidence intervals operate under various assumptions.First, they assume that the source data, which is the observational data one gathered to train the model, is independent and identically distributed. This assumption implies that the chance of including one location in the data has no bearing on whether another is included. But, for example, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) air sensors are placed with other air sensor locations in mind.Second, existing methods often assume that the model is perfectly correct, but this assumption is never true in practice. Finally, they assume the source data are similar to the target data where one wants to estimate.But in spatial settings, the source data can be fundamentally different from the target data because the target data are in a different location than where the source data were gathered.For instance, a scientist might use data from EPA pollution monitors to train a machine-learning model that can predict health outcomes in a rural area where there are no monitors. But the EPA pollution monitors are likely placed in urban areas, where there is more traffic and heavy industry, so the air quality data will be much different than the air quality data in the rural area.In this case, estimates of association using the urban data suffer from bias because the target data are systematically different from the source data.A smooth solutionThe new method for generating confidence intervals explicitly accounts for this potential bias.Instead of assuming the source and target data are similar, the researchers assume the data vary smoothly over space.For instance, with fine particulate air pollution, one wouldn’t expect the pollution level on one city block to be starkly different than the pollution level on the next city block. Instead, pollution levels would smoothly taper off as one moves away from a pollution source.“For these types of problems, this spatial smoothness assumption is more appropriate. It is a better match for what is actually going on in the data,” Broderick says.When they compared their method to other common techniques, they found it was the only one that could consistently produce reliable confidence intervals for spatial analyses. In addition, their method remains reliable even when the observational data are distorted by random errors.In the future, the researchers want to apply this analysis to different types of variables and explore other applications where it could provide more reliable results.This research was funded, in part, by an MIT Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) seed grant, the Office of Naval Research, Generali, Microsoft, and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

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Gas Stoves Are Poisoning Americans by Releasing Toxic Fumes Associated With Asthma and Lung Cancer

In the United States, gas stoves are the main source of indoor nitrogen dioxide—a toxic gas tied to many health problems—according to a new study

Gas Stoves Are Poisoning Americans by Releasing Toxic Fumes Associated With Asthma and Lung Cancer In the United States, gas stoves are the main source of indoor nitrogen dioxide—a toxic gas tied to many health problems—according to a new study Sarah Kuta - Daily Correspondent December 11, 2025 9:13 a.m. Gas stoves are responsible for more than half of some Americans’ total exposure to toxic nitrogen dioxide, a new study suggests. Pexels A hidden danger may be lurking in your kitchen. Many Americans are breathing in nitrogen dioxide—a harmful pollutant that’s been linked with asthma and lung cancer—from fumes emitted by their gas stoves. A new study, published this month in the journal PNAS Nexus, suggests that gas stoves are the main source of indoor nitrogen dioxide pollution in the United States, responsible for more than half of some Americans’ total exposure to the gas. “We’ve spent billions of dollars cleaning up our air outdoors and nothing to clean up our air indoors,” study co-author Robert Jackson, an environmental scientist at Stanford University, tells SFGATE’s Anna FitzGerald Guth. “As our air outdoors gets cleaner and cleaner, a higher proportion of the pollution we breathe comes from indoor sources.” Scientists and public health experts have long known that nitrogen dioxide is bad for human health. The reddish-brown gas can irritate airways and worsen or even contribute to the development of respiratory diseases like asthma. Children and older individuals are particularly susceptible to its effects. Nitrogen dioxide is a byproduct of burning fuel, so most emissions come from vehicles, power plants and off-road equipment. However, indoors, the primary culprit is the gas stove, the household appliance that burns natural gas or propane to produce controlled flames under individual burners. It’s relatively easy to keep tabs on outdoor nitrogen dioxide concentrations and estimate their corresponding exposure risks, thanks to satellites and ground-level stations located across the country. By contrast, however, indoor sources are “neither systematically monitored nor estimated,” the researchers write in the paper. Did you know? Bans on gas Berkeley, California, became the first city to prohibit gas hookups in most new buildings in 2019, although the ordinance was halted in 2024 after the California Restaurant Association sued. Still, 130 local governments have now implemented zero-emission building ordinances, according to the Building Decarbonization Coalition. For the study, Jackson and his colleagues performed a ZIP-code-level estimate of how much total nitrogen dioxide communities are exposed to. Information came from two databases tracking outdoor nitrogen dioxide concentrations and a building energy use database, which helped the team construct characteristics of 133 million residential dwellings across the country, along with their home appliances. Among individuals who use gas stoves, the appliances are responsible for roughly a quarter of their overall nitrogen dioxide exposure on average, the team found. For those who cook more frequently or for longer durations, gas stoves can be responsible for as much as 57 percent of their total exposure. “Our research shows that if you use a gas stove, you’re often breathing as much nitrogen dioxide pollution indoors from your stove as you are from all outdoor sources combined,” says Jackson in a Stanford statement. Individuals who use gas stoves are exposed to roughly 25 percent more total residential nitrogen dioxide over the long term than those who use electric stoves, which do not emit the gas. Total exposure tends to be highest in big cities, where people often have small living spaces and outdoor levels are also high. Switching from a gas to an electric stove would help roughly 22 million Americans dip below the maximum nitrogen dioxide exposure levels recommended by the World Health Organization, the analyses suggest. The authors recommend replacing gas stoves with electric models whenever possible. “You would never willingly stand over the tailpipe of your car, breathing in pollution,” Jackson tells Women’s Health’s Korin Miller. “Why breathe the same toxins every day in your kitchen?” Dylan Plummer, acting deputy director for building electrification for the Sierra Club, a nonprofit environmental organization, agrees. Plummer, who was not involved with the research, tells Inside Climate News’ Phil McKenna that “years from now, we will look back at the common practice of burning fossil fuels in our homes with horror.” If swapping stoves is not possible, experts have some other tips for reducing nitrogen dioxide exposure. “One thing people could do is to minimize the time the stoves are on,” Jamie Alan, a toxicologist at Michigan State University who was not involved with the research, tells Women’s Health. “Another suggestion would be to increase ventilation,” such as by turning on the range hood and opening a window. Other suggestions by the New York Times’ Rachel Wharton include using a portable induction countertop unit or electric kitchen gadgets like tea kettles, toaster ovens and slow cookers. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

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Parents Might Pass Depression Down To Kids Through One Specific Symptom, Experts Say

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterTHURSDAY, Dec. 11, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Children of depressed parents are more likely to develop depression...

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterTHURSDAY, Dec. 11, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Children of depressed parents are more likely to develop depression themselves, and a new study suggests this risk might be tied to one specific symptom of depression.It’s already known that depression in parents can affect how children’s brains respond to positive and negative feedback, researchers said.“If parents are experiencing forms of depression where they’re not enjoying things and aren’t interested in things, that seems to be impacting how their kids are responding to what’s going on around them,” senior researcher Brandon Gibb, director of the Mood Disorders Institute at Binghamton University, said in a news release.“They’re less reactive to positive things and negative things,” he continued. “It seems that parents’ experiences of anhedonia is the key feature of depression impacting how children’s brains are responding, at least in our study, rather than other common symptoms of depression.”For the new study, researchers performed a lab experiment involving more than 200 parents and children ages 7 to 11.The experiment was designed to see how parents’ anhedonic symptoms affect children’s brain responses to positive and negative feedback.“The idea is that if you have this risk factor of being less interested or less engaged or finding things less enjoyable, maybe that’s reflected in how your brain responds to environmental feedback,” said lead researcher Alana Israel, a doctoral student at Binghamton University, a branch of the State University of New York. “Children of parents who have higher levels of anhedonic depressive symptoms should show a reduced response while other depressive symptoms theoretically should not be as related to this specific brain response,” Israel explained in a news release.In the experiment, children were presented with two doors and asked to guess the one with a prize behind it. If they chose the right door, they won money; if they chose wrong, they lost money.Results showed that kids’ response to either winning or losing money was blunted if their parents had higher levels of anhedonic symptoms. “What that tells us is that there is something specific about parents’ anhedonia that may impact children’s neural responses,” Israel said. “It further specifies a group of children who might be at heightened risk for loss of interest or pleasure and lack of engagement, which is a core feature of depression.”Future research should investigate how family dynamics might change if parents with anhedonic symptoms receive treatment or start to feel better, the team said.Researchers said it’s also important to examine whether children’s responses to other sorts of feedback, like social feedback from peers, are also affected by parents’ depression.“There are researchers looking at interventions that are designed to increase positive mood, positive engagement and positive parent-child relationships,” Israel said. “It will be important to see if these findings can identify families who might be most likely to benefit from those types of interventions.”SOURCE: Binghamton University, news release, Dec. 4, 2025Copyright © 2025 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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Suggested Viewing

Red Bean

An individual who is suffering from the obsessive-compulsive disorder and forced to migrate to outer space, he misses his mother and homeland. However, the only response to his calling his mother is an endless busy tone.

Cosmos
Health
Culture

We Are Nature

We made this short film under lockdown conditions throughout the pandemic of Covid-19. The film argues that policies are not enough to prevent a future outbreak. We need a paradigm shift in how we view nature and the rest of life on this planet. The film was made remotely via zoom, a fact made clear in the style of the film. Our speakers appear on screens, which we filmed from inside our homes. Each speaker offers a different perspective on the origins of the pandemic in the ways we see and value nature. If humans can’t escape their connection to the natural world, it’s time for a better one. The health of us and the planet depends on it.

Health
Nature
Animals

Allergy Alert: Paranoia in Our Immune System

From peanuts and pollen to cats and dust mites, allergy rates are soaring dramatically all over the globe, with inoffensive substances triggering life-threatening physical responses. Experts are predicting that by 2050, one in two will suffer from an allergy. Why are our immune systems overreacting in this way? To stem the tide of the epidemic, scientists are investigating the interface between genetics, environmental factors and our modern lifestyle, and developing revolutionary new approaches to prevention and treatment.

Science
Crisis
Health

Sprayed

An exploration of what happens when whole communities get exposed to toxins: Naled sprayed on Miami residents to fight Zika virus, Agent Orange sprayed on the Vietcong, and release of GMO mosquitoes in Brazil with pyriproxyfen added to drinking water to fight dengue. What are the results for nature and humanity? We meet Agent Orange survivors at Vietnamese detoxification and rehabilitation centers, parents of babies born with microcephaly from Zika virus, and Florida residents dealing with efforts to kill mosquitoes carrying Zika virus. Perspectives of doctors, scientists, and politicians are balanced with voices of ordinary citizens and victims to explore concerns about the potential impact on current and future generations.

Chemicals
Health
Science

Lead in the Land

Lead in the Land is a documentary focusing on the harsh reality and far-reaching effects of lead poisoning, an invisible and insidious threat afflicting thousands of children in the United States. The film sheds light on the circumstances around lead poisoning, examining its causes, effects and potential solutions.

Chemicals
Social Justice
Health

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