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Chronic exposure to pollution from wildfires has been linked to tens of thousands of deaths annually in the United States, according to a new study. The paper, published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances, found that from 2006 to 2020, long-term exposure to tiny particulates from wildfire smoke contributed to an average of 24,100 deaths a year in the lower 48 states. “Our message is: Wildfire smoke is very dangerous. It is an increasing threat to human health,” said Yaguang Wei, a study author and assistant professor in the department of environmental medicine at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. (Pineda, 2/4)

Nearly four in 10 cancer cases diagnosed around the world in 2022 can be traced back to risks people and societies have the power to change, according to a sweeping new global study. The analysis, published in Nature Medicine, examined 36 cancer types across 185 countries and linked today’s cancer diagnoses to how common certain risk factors were about a decade earlier. The time lag reflected the reality that cancers often take years to develop after exposure. (Gray, 2/4)

Pink noise, a staticky sound that’s supposed to help people fall asleep, may actually worsen your rest, a new study found. Pink noise — like white noise — contains all the frequencies humans can hear, but it plays lower frequencies more prominently. Sounds that are used for different types of brain stimulation or relaxation are assigned a color based on how their noise spectrum matches with a colored light spectrum. White noise plays all frequencies at the same intensity, and white light combines all the visible light colors. (Ozcan, 2/4)

Preventive cholera vaccination programs will restart globally after they were halted for nearly four years due to a vaccine shortage, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. In a joint statement, WHO, vaccine alliance GAVI and the United Nations Children’s Fund said stocks of oral cholera vaccines in the global stockpile they manage had improved to nearly 70 million doses last year. The vaccines are distributed free to countries that need them, but they had to be used only in reaction to outbreaks rather than preventative campaigns after a shortage was announced in 2022 because of a surge in demand. (2/4)

A study led by University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) anthropology professor Molly Fox has found that pregnancy and breastfeeding are linked with stronger cognitive function in postmenopausal women. Specifically, the team reports that greater cumulative time spent pregnant and breastfeeding correlates with better global cognition, as well as verbal and visual memory, later in life. (Gray, 2/4)

Women who underwent opportunistic bilateral salpingectomy (OBS) with hysterectomy had almost an 80% lower risk of developing serous ovarian cancer versus hysterectomy alone, a large retrospective cohort study showed. (Bankhead, 2/4)

Menopause clinics across the U.S. are hearing from women who are having trouble filling prescriptions for estrogen patches, a common hormone replacement therapy. “There’s just more demand for these medications, and I think it’s exponentially risen over the last three or four years,” said Dr. Rajita Patil, director of UCLA Health’s Comprehensive Menopause Program. “I don’t think that the supply chain was ready for that.” Hormone replacement therapy prescriptions for women 50-65 have increased 86% since 2021, according to Epic Research, which analyzes electronic health records nationwide. (Kopf, 2/3)

Before Ivey Cross was ever expecting, she was glued to TikTok videos of women describing their experiences of giving birth at home. Twenty-five weeks into her own pregnancy, she decided to do so herself. She took an online home-birthing class, watched YouTube videos, reached out to midwife practices to assemble her care team and hired a doula. (Ashley O'Brien, 2/3)

It was after seeing a friend go through multiple miscarriages that Kristin Spaans decided to help. With two children of her own, the now 38-year-old offered to become a surrogate and carry her friend’s baby — for which her friend is paying her just under $13,000, she said, on the low-end as far as typical compensation goes. The experience has not been without hiccups. Spaans needed a medical exemption to continue taking an SSRI for anxiety, and there were other delays. “Since surrogacy is such a process of trying to eliminate risk, they just take all the precautions,” she said. (Klotz, 2/5)