Exposure at home: houses, flats, detached and shared housing.
Over 400 Americans a year die from carbon monoxide unrelated to fires. The symptoms impersonate flu — but CO causes no fever, affects everyone in the building at once, and eases when you leave the house. What actually distinguishes them.
The EPA gave water systems until 2034 to replace up to nine million lead service lines. How to find out in one minute whether yours is one of them, which filter specification actually matters, and why boiling makes lead worse rather than better.
Dampness affects an estimated 10–50% of homes, and the evidence linking it to asthma and respiratory infection is solid. But the visible mould is a symptom — and the sprays, anti-mould paints and test kits sold to treat it leave the cause untouched.
Recorded US heat deaths rose from 297 in 2004 to 1,714 in 2022. In New York City records, none of the at-home heat-stress deaths had air conditioning in use — and a quarter had only a fan. Why a fan is not cooling, and what actually works.
The EPA cut the PM2.5 standard from 12 to 9 in 2024 because studies kept finding harm below the old limit. Meanwhile wildfire smoke has reversed clean air progress in 35 states. What a HEPA filter measurably does — and what it cannot touch.
Cooking causes more home fires than anything else, and unattended equipment is 37% of them. Meanwhile 57% of home fire deaths happen where the smoke alarm was missing or dead — and 43% of failures were batteries someone removed.
US customers averaged 11 hours without power in 2024, double the previous decade — and 80% of it came from major events. What fails and when, why a battery beats a generator for most households, and the carbon monoxide rule that kills about 100 people a year.
Exercise cuts falls by 23% at high certainty. Home modification cuts them 38% — but only for people already at risk. And in December 2024 the USPSTF recommended against vitamin D for fall prevention. What the Cochrane reviews actually found.
A 60,977-person study found that when you sleep predicts mortality better than how long you sleep — and that the supplement most people buy is the one sleep medicine recommends against. What the cohort data and clinical guidelines actually say.
Gas stoves raise indoor nitrogen dioxide by about 4 ppb — roughly three quarters of the WHO annual guideline on their own. What the peer-reviewed indoor air quality measurements found, why kitchen size matters more than the appliance, and which fixes actually work.
