Word: urbanic
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...substances called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), a by-product of the incomplete burning of gas, diesel, oil and coal. PAHs are released as a vapor and also cling to fine, breathable particles emitted from car and truck engines and coal-fired plants. This kind of pollution is common in urban areas and tends to be particularly bad in poor neighborhoods with heavy car and truck traffic and idling. But, Perera notes, these pollutants are widespread enough to affect populations other than those living in poor, urban areas...
...asthma - namely exposure to pollution from traffic and secondhand smoke. Scientists found that children whose parents described themselves as stressed and anxious were 50% more likely to develop asthma than kids with non-stressed parents - at least when these youngsters were also exposed to pollution in a high-traffic, urban setting. (Read "The Year in Medicine 2008: From...
...findings will spur additional studies to investigate why, for example, asthma rates tend to be higher among lower socioeconomic groups. "There are a lot of potential reasons why poverty might be associated with asthma," he says, including that poorer families tend to live in more highly polluted, densely packed urban areas...
...stay lightly regulated for much longer. Last year Malaysian forestry officials and police raided more than a dozen illegal swiftlet farms across Sarawak, a state where only two of an estimated 1,500 birdhouses have licenses. The rest contravene local wildlife-protection laws that forbid swiftlet farms in urban areas. Sarawak's once profitable industry is grounded for now. But with unflagging demand from China, and increasing numbers of birdhouses popping up in Vietnam, Cambodia and the Philippines, the regionwide trade in birds' nests is heading in only one direction: upward...
...American forces there in nearly a year. The casualties came as more than 4,000 Marines launched an offensive to drive insurgents from southern Helmand province, a Taliban stronghold. The tactic is the latest effort to shift U.S. military might from Iraq--where American soldiers withdrew from urban areas on June 30--to the nation now considered the key front in the war on terrorism...