Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Medicine and Health Sciences
Navigating Uncertain Futures: Dilemmas and Opportunities in Climate and Health in LMICs
Published: 2026-10-20
Subjects: Environmental Public Health, Medicine and Health Sciences, Public Health
Climate-health planning in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) is constrained by structural health-system vulnerabilities, cross-sectoral coordination challenges, and trade-offs that remain invisible within sectoral planning processes. This study addresses three methodological gaps: the scarcity of multi-regional, LMIC-led climate-health futures; the absence of methods that translate [...]
Metal Toxin Signatures in the Smoke of Wildland–Urban Interface Fires
Published: 2026-09-30
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires burn natural and built environments simultaneously, generating smoke from vegetation, soil, buildings, vehicles, and infrastructure. Airborne metals can provide source signatures and pose inhalation hazards, yet the sources and physicochemical properties of these metals in WUI fire smoke remain poorly resolved. This uncertainty limits identification of burned [...]
Post-Fire Resuspension of Metal Toxins at the Wildland–Urban Interface
Published: 2026-09-03
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
After wildland–urban interface (WUI) fires, the severe destruction leaves metal-containing materials on the ground. During post-fire recovery, wind, debris removal, vehicle movement, and reconstruction can disturb these residues and release these materials into the air. However, what toxic metals are released into the air from fire-altered materials and what controls their airborne release are [...]
Strengthening informal urban functions for climate-resilient cities
Published: 2026-08-05
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Informal workers provide essential urban functions, yet climate hazards can disrupt the conditions that sustain them. We propose the informal urban function as an analytical unit linking worker conditions, functional performance, and sustainability outcomes. The framework identifies structural conditions shaping capacity, climate pathways leading to continuity, erosion, disruption, or [...]
A Randomised Controlled Trial Assessing Infectious Disease Risks from Bathing in Inland Recreational Waters
Published: 2026-06-04
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences
Evidence to determine the suitability of water quality standards to prevent illness from recreation exposure in inland waters is limited. We report findings from four Hungarian freshwater study sites included in the Epibathe study, a large randomised controlled trial. A total of 2,368 participants were randomly allocated either to bathe for ten minutes undertaking at least three head immersions, [...]
Antimicrobial Resistance – A Growing Global Groundwater Challenge
Published: 2026-05-08
Subjects: Education, Engineering, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Antimicrobials are composed of medications such as antibiotics and antivirals which are widely used to ensure human and animal health. However, inappropriate use of antimicrobials is a major driver of antimicrobial resistance in groundwater or other aquatic systems. AMR arises from complex interactions between humans, animals, microbial organisms, medicines, wildlife and the environment. [...]
The Impact of Climate Change on Human Health and Pharmaceuticals
Published: 2026-02-16
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Public Health, Environmental Sciences, Medical Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Pharmacology, Toxicology and Environmental Health, Public Health, Sustainability, Toxicology
Climate change and air pollution affect nearly every major organ system, altering both the presentation of disease and patient responses to pharmaceutical treatments. However, existing knowledge on how patients, healthcare professionals, and governments should prepare for these challenges is fragmented. Climate change contributes to premature mortality, increased morbidity, and exacerbation of [...]
Pathways of resilience: a fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis of healthcare systems resilience to extreme weather events
Published: 2026-01-26
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences
Background Increasing frequency and intensity of extreme weather events threaten healthcare services globally, with particularly intense risks to low-resource regions. Evidenced pathways for building and enacting resilience in complex health systems are under researched. Literature on resilient healthcare is dominated by infections disease outbreaks and lacks synthesised insights from [...]
The Geography of Insufficient Sleep in the Contiguous United States (CONUS)
Published: 2025-11-14
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences
Insufficient sleep is becoming increasingly prevalent, partially because of the accelerated pace of modern life, and is linked to a wide range of adverse physical and mental health outcomes. While several social, physical, and environmental factors are known to influence sleep duration, the underlying mechanisms and their geographic variability remain poorly understood. The growing availability [...]
Nutrition in Abrupt Sunlight Reduction Scenarios: analysis and prevention of malnutrition in low-income regions
Published: 2025-10-12
Subjects: Agriculture, Food Science, Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Public Health
Purpose: An abrupt sunlight reduction scenario (ASRS) can be triggered by a nuclear war, a large volcanic eruption, or an asteroid strike, resulting in global agricultural collapse. A wide portfolio of resilient food interventions has been developed to address these issues, but even if they succeed in providing sufficient food energy for the global population, economic inequality could still [...]
Estimating Stability Constants and Entropy for Reactions Between Aqueous Metal Ions and Monovalent Oxygen-Bearing Ligands: Applications to Hydrothermal Metal–Organic Acid Systems
Published: 2025-10-01
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Linear free energy relations were obtained from existing experimental data and used to estimate stability constants for over 16,000 metal complexes with monovalent oxygen-bearing ligands comprising 75 metal species and 220 ligands. Similar relationships for metal-ligand entropy of association were also obtained which facilitate computation of stability constants from 0 to 125°C for over 6000 [...]
Trees and Life, Heat and Death: Integrating Temperature and Green Spaces with Social Determinants of Health in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Published: 2025-10-01
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Objectives Climate change has wide-reaching implications for planetary and human health; one of its rising impacts is deaths related to extreme heat. This study attempts to integrate remotely sensed measures of temperature and greenness into the methodology of Code Red, a study examining the relationship between health and a variety of social determinants in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, initially [...]
Cadmium (Cd) Contamination in Soil, Leachate, and Air at Sukawinatan Landfill, Palembang, Indonesia: A Risk Assessment Perspective
Published: 2025-09-20
Subjects: Medicine and Health Sciences
The Sukawinatan Landfill in Palembang operates using an open dumping system, posing a potential risk of environmental contamination by the heavy metal cadmium (Cd). This study aims to analyze Cd contamination levels in soil, leachate, and air, and assess the potential health and environmental risks. Soil samples were randomly collected from three points at depths of 10 cm, 20 cm, and 30 cm. [...]
Post-Wildfire Indoor Pollution in WUI Areas Following the 2025 Los Angeles Fires — Part I: Establishing Baseline Contaminant Levels Prior to Home Reoccupation
Published: 2025-08-02
Subjects: Engineering, Medicine and Health Sciences
Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) fires pose unique environmental pollution challenges due to the combustion of both natural vegetation and synthetic building materials. Following the 2025 Palisades and Eaton wildfires in Los Angeles, we conducted a field study to characterize indoor air quality and surface contamination in 19 homes before re-occupancy. Indoor PM₂.₅ and PM₁₀ concentrations averaged [...]
The rapid progress of climate change requires effective concepts for protecting people indoors
Published: 2025-06-30
Subjects: Life Sciences, Medicine and Health Sciences
According to the latest forecasts from the United Nations, it is highly likely that we will miss by a wide margin the 1.5 °C climate target set in the Paris Agreement in 2015. Rather, this planet has to prepare for a global temperature increase of 2.6 - 3.1 °C by 2100 and associated frequently occurring extreme weather events. It is therefore high time to design and technically equip the [...]