Mind & body, in brief

85 health and environment groups asked the World Health Organization on Tuesday to lower its nitrate limit for drinking water. [1]

Nitrate is a natural chemical made of nitrogen and oxygen. [1] Farm fertiliser, manure and leaking septic tanks push more of it into water. [1]

The WHO limit is 50 milligrams of nitrate a litre. [1] It dates back to 1958. [1]

Children and pregnant women are most at risk from high nitrate, the groups say. [1]

Scientists split harm into acute, from a big dose now, and chronic, from small doses over years. [3]

The WHO limit was set mainly against the acute harm to babies. [3] The cancer link comes from chronic, lower doses. [3]

A sunburn shows up the same day, but years of sun can show up as skin damage decades later.

The Danish result is a link found in health records, which its authors say adds to earlier evidence. [2]

A review of 25 reviews found unsafe water linked to cancers. [9] It called the certainty of exact risk figures limited. [9]

The groups want nitrate added to the WHO's coming review of its drinking-water guidelines. [1]

The world's limit for nitrate in drinking water was set in 1958 to stop an illness in babies, and most countries still copy it. [1]

A study of 2.7 million Danes found more bowel cancer at a small fraction of that limit. [2]

Denmark has already promised a much lower limit, and 85 groups now ask the WHO to follow. [1]

Their government has already committed to a much lower nitrate limit than the rest of the world uses. [1]

They carry the most risk, the groups say. [1]

Whether the WHO will review its nitrate limit.

The letter asks for nitrate to join an upcoming review of the drinking-water guidelines, and the report carries no reply from the WHO. [1]

Which unit the Danish risk threshold is written in.

The Danish study gives 3.87 milligrams a litre. [2] A Nature paper cites the same figure as milligrams of nitrogen, which would mean far more nitrate. [3]

Why nitrate links show up for some cancers and not others.

The US thyroid cancer study called the evidence on its own question limited, and found no clear link. [6]

A health trust in Northern Ireland voted to stop births at Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry from 23 November. [10]

Births will move to Craigavon Hospital, which expects about 1,700 extra births. [10]

The Southern Health Trust says it needs 8 permanent consultant obstetricians, the senior doctors for births. [10] From the end of this month it will have 2. [10]

It will also have 3 temporary ones, called locums. [10]

A 40-year-old pregnant woman asked the High Court on Tuesday to make the trust wait. [10]

Checks before and after birth will stay at Daisy Hill. [10]

Some women in rural South Down and South Armagh were already being sent to Craigavon to give birth. [10]

Each woman will get a named midwife, and ambulance crews will choose which hospital to take her to. [10]

Health planners call this consolidation: running a service from fewer sites when staff are too few for all. [10]

The trust says that with too few consultants, it cannot safely run births at both hospitals. [10]

A school with one music teacher for two buildings ends up teaching music in only one of them.

They must give birth further from home, at Craigavon. [10]

When births will return to Daisy Hill.

The trust calls the move temporary but has given no time frame for bringing births back. [10]

Powys, a rural county in Wales, may cut its community hospital beds from 146 to 90 or 60. [11]

Powys has no general hospital, only beds in 8 small community hospitals. [11]

Beds would stay only in Brecon and Newtown, and possibly Llandrindod Wells. [11]

Powys Teaching Health Board says small wards spread over a big county are hard to staff. [11]

The average trip to a hospital bed would rise from about 12 minutes to 24. [11]

A 14-week public consultation runs until 10 January 2027. [11]

More than a quarter of people in Powys are over 65. [11] For some, the trip could pass 45 minutes each way. [11]

Health planners weigh staff against distance: Powys finds 8 small wards hard to staff. [11]

The board says fewer sites would be safer to run. [11] The average trip would double, from 12 minutes to 24. [11]

A town that shuts two of its three bus stops gets quicker buses and longer walks to them.

GPs, politicians and local people oppose the plan. [11] One campaigner says home care cannot reach people 20 or 30 miles from town. [11]

Visiting a relative in a bed further away gets harder; one man says he could not have seen his dying wife. [11]

Hope Haven, a walk-in mental health centre in Whitehaven, England, is open 24 hours a day. [12]

People need no diagnosis and no doctor's referral to use it. [12]

About 3,000 people used it from March to July. [12] Nearly half had never had NHS mental health care before. [12]

It is one of 6 pilot centres in England, part of the NHS's 10-year health plan. [12]

Its area has about 20 suicides per 100,000 people, almost double the national rate. [12]

Admissions to mental health wards in the area fell 24% from January to September, against last year. [12]

Mental health services call this open access: anyone can walk in, at any hour, with no referral. [12]

Nearly half its 3,000 users had never met NHS mental health services. [12] So the centre is reaching people the usual route did not. [12]

A shop with no queue and no membership card gets customers who never went in before.

100 more centres are due to open, starting this autumn. [12]

Whether Hope Haven caused the fall in ward admissions.

The figure is an early one, and the formal evaluation of the 6 pilot centres is due later this year. [12]

A new maternity hospital in Belfast, Northern Ireland, has stayed closed since 2024 because of bacteria in its water. [13]

The bacterium is Pseudomonas, which killed 3 babies at Belfast's Royal Jubilee Hospital in 2012. [13]

It rarely harms healthy people, but babies and people with weak immune systems are at risk. [13]

Chemicals used to flush the bacteria out have damaged the pipes. [13] More than 2,200 valves need replacing. [13]

That could add almost 10 million pounds, taking the project past 100 million. [13]

Mothers keep giving birth at the old Royal Jubilee hospital while the new one waits. [13]

A report by engineers says the chemical dose used to kill the germs wore the valves out fast. [13]

So the fix for one danger, Pseudomonas, created a second job: replacing more than 2,200 valves. [13]

Scrubbing a pan with wire wool gets it clean, but doing it every day scratches through the pan.

The builders, Graham Construction and Bam Ireland, say every water test was clear when they handed it over. [13]

Part of the building may open by March 2027, if the repairs work. [13]

Who pays to repair the new Belfast maternity hospital.

The trust refused to say whether the builders or taxpayers meet the costs, citing talks with experts on liability. [13]

Dozens of people slept in their cars to get free care at a clinic near Washington DC on 17 October. [14]

By 4am, about 80 cars had arrived for a clinic due to open at 6am. [14]

The clinic saw 467 patients over the weekend, mostly for teeth and check-ups, and 99 had eye tests. [14]

It was run by Remote Area Medical, a US charity whose volunteer doctors and dentists give free care. [14]

The area is well off: median household income tops $108,000, and about 94% have health insurance. [14]

Still, 1 in 4 patients had insurance, but could not pay the costs it left them. [14]

Nearly 2 in 3 had no usual place for care except a hospital emergency room. [14]

Health economists call them out-of-pocket costs: what a patient still pays with insurance, which brought insured people here. [14]

Medicare, the US health plan for older people, does not cover routine dental care. [14] So Alma Walton, who has Medicare, came for a filling, 59th in line. [14]

A phone plan with free calls still costs money if every text is charged extra.

Many of the clinic's figures come from Remote Area Medical's own survey of patients there. [14]

Cheromie Johnson estimated free eye care for her and her son saved them more than $1,000. [14]

Their cover left dental and other costs they could not meet, so they queued overnight for free care. [14]

Kenya may give the HPV vaccine to boys as well as girls, said Ouma Oluga, a senior health official. [15]

HPV is a common virus passed on through sex. [15] Long infection with some types causes most cervical cancer. [15]

Cervical cancer affects about 7,000 Kenyan women each year. [15]

A new national survey found 59% of girls had a first dose, up from 30% in 2022. [15]

Only 20% had the recommended second dose. [15]

Vaccinating boys also cuts how far the virus spreads, and protects boys from other HPV cancers. [15]

Vaccine planners watch the drop between doses: 59% of girls got a first dose, but only 20% a second. [15]

The news report blames weak follow-up, low awareness and poor access to vaccination. [15]

A school trip in two parts loses a few pupils who never bring back the second form.

Kenya's government has set no timeline for vaccinating boys. [15]

In Kenya, the share of girls with a first dose of the HPV vaccine, which protects against the virus behind most cervical cancer, rose from 30% in 2022 to 59%.

Israel's yearly report on community health care, published on Tuesday, found wide gaps between rich and poor. [16]

Among women, 36.8% of the poorest group were obese, against 19.1% of the richest. [16]

Cervical cancer screening reached 80.3% of the richest women and 49.7% of the poorest. [16]

Obesity among 7-year-olds rose to 8.6%, the highest since tracking began in 2014. [16]

Antidepressant buying rose about 14% since 2022, and 29% among Arab citizens. [16]

The gaps also run between central Israel and outlying areas, and between Jewish and Arab communities. [16]

Public health researchers call gaps like this health inequalities: worse health for people with less money, as here. [16]

Among Israeli women, obesity nearly doubles from the richest group to the poorest. [16]

In a game where richer players start with better kit, they tend to finish higher.

In Israel, more women in every group are being screened for cervical cancer, and deaths from it are falling, the head of the national health report said.

Punjab, a Pakistani province, has not handed out its free blood-cancer drugs for about 3 months. [17]

About 5,000 patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia, a blood cancer, are registered for them. [17]

They collect the drugs every month at 5 hospitals, including Mayo Hospital in Lahore. [17]

Patients now buy the costly drugs in shops, where they are also short. [17]

Officials blame a delayed tender, the bidding process used to buy the drugs. [17]

Doctors had asked the province to widen its list of cancer drugs from 4 to 27. [17]

Most patients cannot afford to keep buying the drugs, doctors warned. [17]

Health systems call it central procurement: one department buys for every centre, as Punjab's now does. [17]

So one delayed tender left all 5 centres without the drugs at once. [17]

If the one person who does a family's shopping misses a week, the whole house runs out at once.

Hospitals may now buy the drugs locally as a stop-gap. [17]

Patients who got the drugs free must now buy them on the open market. [17]

They now pay shop prices for drugs the province promised free. [17]

When Punjab's patients will get their free drugs back.

The health minister hopes it will be resolved very soon, but the tender may take more time. [17]

France will send a letter about fertility to every woman and man aged 29 by the end of November. [18]

It comes from Assurance Maladie, France's public health insurer. [18]

It invites people who want children to see a health worker before trying for a baby. [18]

It advises seeing a specialist after 1 year of trying before 35, or 6 months at 35 and over. [18]

Health minister Stephanie Rist says 15% to 25% of French couples who want a child have difficulty. [18]

Last year more than 20,000 women asked to freeze their eggs, up 30% in a year. [18]

Waits to freeze eggs run from 14 to 24 months, depending on the region. [18]

Doctors call age a decisive factor in fertility: France stores eggs from 29 to 37, for use up to 45. [18]

The letter is one of 16 measures in a plan from February, so it is not new policy. [18]

The plan followed President Emmanuel Macron's 2024 call for "demographic rearmament", a push for more births. [18]

Rachel Apa, 24, died after collapsing near the end of Sunday's New York City Marathon, her father said. [19]

It was her first marathon. [19] She collapsed in Central Park, 2 miles from the finish. [19]

At mile 18 she texted her father "Ow", and a mile later "Ow, ow". [19]

A member of the public gave her CPR, and race medics used a defibrillator. [19]

She died that night at Mount Sinai hospital of rhabdomyolysis, her father said. [19]

Apa played college field hockey and trained for months, so the risk can reach fit athletes. [20]

About 26,000 cases are reported in the US each year, research suggests. [20]

Doctors call it rhabdomyolysis, or rhabdo: muscle breaking down, often after very hard exercise. [20]

Broken-down muscle releases waste into the blood. [20] Too much of it can overwhelm the kidneys and make them fail. [20]

A sink drains a trickle all day, but a burst pipe floods it faster than it can drain.

Warning signs include cramps, unexpected pain and dark urine, hours or days after exercise, the CDC says. [20]

New York Road Runners, which runs the race, said a runner last died after a medical incident in 2024. [19]

Studies of 2 US elections found more heart trouble around voting day, STAT, a US health news site, reports. [21]

In North Carolina in 2016, people with heart devices had 77% more irregular beats around the vote. [21]

After the 2020 vote, heart attacks rose at Kaiser Permanente, a big California health provider. [21] The rise was against the same 5 days, 2 weeks before. [21]

Democrats and Republicans had a similar risk. [21]

Nearly half of US adults have some heart or blood vessel disease, including high blood pressure. [21]

Cardiologists call it acute stress: anger and fear set off the body's fight-or-flight response. [21]

Adrenaline, a stress chemical, rises, and the vagus nerve, which slows the heart, eases off. [21] That can upset the heart's rhythm in people prone to it. [21]

A heart pounds before a big exam, even when the pupil is sitting still.

The studies show a link with elections, not proof that elections cause heart attacks. [21]

A study of 632 US adults tested how disgust, awareness of the body and politics fit together, DW reports. [22]

People more easily disgusted by sex tended to be more conservative. [22]

Moral disgust, at wrongdoing like cruelty, went with conservatism only in people less aware of their bodies. [22]

Disgust at germs, like rotten food, showed no clear link to politics in this study. [22]

An older review of 24 studies found easily disgusted people leaned socially conservative. [22]

Disgust probably evolved to keep people away from things that could make them sick, said psychologist Yoel Inbar. [22]

Tsakiris says people unsure what their body's feelings mean may be easier to sway by messages that name them. [22]

Psychologists call sensing the body's own signals, like hunger or a racing heart, interoception. [22]

A signal "doesn't arrive with a label", said Manos Tsakiris of Royal Holloway, a London university. [22] People have to work out what it means. [22]

A churning stomach before a match can feel like fear or like excitement, depending on how a player reads it.

Inbar called the new findings "suggestive at best" and said the link is small. [22]

Children who ate more ultra-processed food had stronger brain reward responses to food pictures, a study found. [23]

Ultra-processed foods are factory-made, like packaged bread and breakfast cereal. [23]