Michael Osterholm, University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy director, was driving to the airport the morning of Dec. 30, 2019, when his cellphone rang.
A colleague was on the line. Reports were trickling in about an unusual pneumonia spreading in Wuhan, China.
The moment felt eerily familiar.
Osterholm likens it to a seismologist watching the first needle tremors before an earthquake, unsure whether it will pass quietly or destroy everything in its path.
“Is there something to this, or is it just background noise?” he recalls in his new book, cowritten with journalist Mark Olshaker, “The Big One: How We Must Prepare for Future Deadly Pandemics” (Little, Brown Spark).
“Is this something to alert the public to, or will it just cause needless worry and social disruption?”
Osterholm argues that humanity spends billions preparing for wars but only scraps defending against microbes.
The 1918 influenza pandemic “killed as many as 100 million people worldwide, far more than the blood-soaked world war that had recently ended,” he notes.
COVID-19 was a “microbial 9/11” that killed millions, warped global politics and reordered daily life.
It brought society to its knees “in a matter of weeks,” he writes — a feat terrorists could never achieve.
But compared with what could come, it was just the dress rehearsal.
The looming nightmare is what Osterholm calls the Big One — “the disaster, the catastrophe, the cataclysm, that haunts the midnight of every responsible epidemiologist’s soul.”
A virus that manages to be as contagious as COVID and as lethal as SARS.
In this contest, he adds bluntly, “Mother Nature still has the upper hand.” --->READ MORE HERE
The global use of face masks surged during the COVID-19 pandemic, but many have since been discarded as waste, contributing to land and water pollution.
As these masks break down, they can release microplastics and chemicals into the environment, raising concerns for both human health and the environment.
A new study led by Coventry University investigated how many microplastics and chemical additives can be released from different types of disposable face masks, such as surgical masks and filtering facepieces, which are often used for personal protection in health care settings or areas with poor air quality. The study is published in the journal Environmental Pollution.
Dr. Anna Bogush and Dr. Ivan Kourtchev from the university's Center for Agroecology, Water and Resilience, placed unused masks in glass beakers containing ultra-pure water and left them undisturbed at room temperature for 24 hours.
The water was then filtered and analyzed in the lab using advanced laboratory techniques to identify the types and quantities of microplastics and chemicals released, with strict controls in place to avoid contamination.
Even without any wear or movement, the masks were found to release microplastic particles and chemical additives into the water, suggesting that these pollutants are already present from the manufacturing process.
The study found that filtering facepieces released three to four times more microplastic particles than standard surgical masks. Most particles were extremely small—less than 100 micrometers in size, roughly the width of a human hair—and made primarily of polypropylene, a common plastic used in mask production. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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