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Nearly half of children in the United States are breathing dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a new report, as experts warned Donald Trump’s expansive rollback of protections will make the situation worse. The 27th annual air quality report from the American Lung Association (ALA) released on Wednesday evaluates pollution across the country by grading levels of ground-level ozone – also known as smog – as well as year-round and short-term spikes in particle pollution, commonly referred to as soot. The report analyzed quality-assured data collected between 2022 and 2024. It found that 33.5 million children in the US – 46% of those under 18 – live in areas that received a failing grade for at least one measure of air pollution. The report also found that 7 million children, or 10% of all children in the US, live in communities that failed all three measures. (Yang, 4/22)

Extended exposure to wildfire smoke may increase the risk of several types of cancer, according to a study presented Tuesday at an American Association for Cancer Research meeting. The research, not yet peer-reviewed, found that people who were exposed to higher levels of wildfire smoke over the previous three years were at increased risk of lung, colorectal, breast, bladder and blood cancers. The study was based on a long-term database following more than 91,000 people. (Johnson and Noll, 4/21)

Heatwaves, cold snaps and heavy rain do more than disrupt your day. They can quietly raise your risk of heart disease, according to a new report in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine. "Broadly, we found that extreme heat and extreme cold were associated with a higher city-level cardiovascular disease burden across 157 Chinese cities from 2015 to 2020," Linjiang Wei, one of the primary authors of the study and a PhD-level researcher at Xiamen University, told ABC News. (Still, 4/21)

After Texas regulators said Tesla’s lithium refinery near Corpus Christi wasn’t violating its permits by discharging what local officials reported as black wastewater into a drainage ditch, independent water testing there this month found two toxic metals and other contaminants. (Martin, 4/21)

Sea levels are much higher than we thought. Real-world oceans are making a mockery of flood-risk forecasts based on crude global modeling. And to make matters worse, coastal lands almost everywhere are subsiding faster than anyone realized — often many times faster than the seas are rising. These findings come from two major new studies that are reshaping our understanding of the threats posed by rising tides and sinking land and underlining the imminent risk of inundation facing tens of millions of people in some of the world’s largest megacities, say researchers not involved in the studies. (Pearce, 4/22)

The Trump administration is taking aim at microplastics, calling them a "human health threat." The tiny fragments are found in the air, water, food and even clothing. In Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania has a microplastics lab that's working on creating new detection methods and ways to clean up the potential toxins. An estimated 33 billion pounds of plastic pollute oceans every year, eventually breaking down into tiny fragments. But it's not just in the ocean, scientists have discovered that microplastics are now ubiquitous. (Stahl, 4/21)