Site new care homes near trees and away from busy roads to protect residents’ lungs, says new study

  UNIVERSITY OF SURREY

To shield older residents from dangerous air pollution, new care homes should be built as far from heavy traffic as possible, according to a new study from the University of Surrey.   

Researchers also found that trees planted between the homes and the road could significantly mitigate the impact of air pollution.   

Professor Prashant Kumar, Director of Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), said:  

“Older adults in care settings can be especially vulnerable to poor quality air. Our study confirms that building care homes next to busy roads without adequate tree planting can significantly increase their exposure to deadly fine particle pollution.  

“We hope planners will be able to use our findings to make sure care homes are built in safer locations – striking the right balance between the convenience of urban living and better air quality.”  

Researchers studied three care homes in the Chinese city of Nanjing. They measured fine particle pollution (PM2.5) at various locations in and around the care homes.   

They found that the amount of pollution inside the care home decreased exponentially, the further it was from the road.  

Huaiwen Wu, a researcher at GCARE, said:   

“Our study gives so many useful insights into where to build new care homes.  

“For instance, there was a significant relationship between outdoor and indoor pollution. This tells us that bedrooms should be kept on the far side of the building where possible."   

Professor Shi-Jie Cao, Visiting Professor at GCARE and Professor at the Southeast University, China, said: 

“We also saw how pollution was highest during rush hour. Concentrations were higher during spells of lighter winds, and during colder seasons when more people are heating their homes.  

“As such, care homes near busy roads could keep their windows closed more during those periods – then open them afterwards to mitigate the accumulation of emissions.”  

The study is published in the journal Atmospheric Environment.   

ENDS 

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JOURNAL

Atmospheric Environment

DOI

10.1016/j.atmosenv.2024.120607 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

The role of roadside green infrastructure in improving air quality in and around elderly care centres in Nanjing, China

 

Cocaine trafficking threatens critical bird habitats

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. – In addition to its human consequences, cocaine trafficking harms the environment and threatens habitats important to dozens of species of migratory birds, according to a new study.

Two-thirds of the areas that are most important to forest birds – including 67 species of migratory birds that breed in the U.S. and Canada and overwinter in Central America – are at increased risk from cocaine trafficking activities, according to the study,  “Intersection of Narco-Trafficking, Enforcement and Bird Conservation in the Americas,” published June 12 in Nature Sustainability.

“When drug traffickers are pushed into remote forested areas, they clear land to create landing strips, roads and cattle pastures,” said lead author Amanda Rodewald, senior director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. “Those activities – and the counterdrug strategies that contribute to them – can deforest landscapes and threaten species.”

In the study, scientists from four universities, as well as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, combined measures of various landscape characteristics and concentrations of migratory birds in Central America to highlight the unexpected connection between a pervasive social problem and biodiversity.

More than half of the global population of one in five migratory species inhabit areas that became more attractive to trafficking following peak law enforcement pressure, measured as the volume of cocaine seized. For example, 90% of the world’s population of federally endangered golden-cheeked warblers and 70% of golden-winged warblers and Philadelphia vireos winter in those vulnerable landscapes.

The largest remaining forests in Central America, which are disproportionately inhabited by Indigenous people – known as the Five Great Forests – are seeing growing levels of cocaine trafficking.

“U.S. drug policy in Central America focuses on the supply side of the equation, and law-enforcement pressure plays a significant role in the movement of trafficking routes and locations of narco-deforestation,” said co-author Nicholas Magliocca, associate professor at the University of Alabama. “After 40 years that approach has not worked. In fact, cocaine trafficking has only expanded and become a worldwide network. It used to be that cocaine was just passing through Central America, but now it’s become a hub of global trans-shipment.”

This study builds upon previous ethnographic and modeling work done by Magliocca and a core group of researchers examining land-use conditions and decisions made by the traffickers themselves based on perceived risk and profit.

“This research gives an even fuller accounting of the harms caused by drug trafficking and the way we currently go about fighting it,” Magliocca said. “Adaptive behavior by the traffickers must be taken into consideration. You have to do more than reactively chase after the drug traffickers, who have nearly unlimited money and power in the region. No question it’s a complex, fluid and dangerous situation.”

“Incorporating measures that build capacity in local communities and governments to monitor and protect their forests, grow alternate forms of income, and resolve unclear land tenure would go a long way,” Rodewald said. “Our study is a reminder that we can’t address social problems in a vacuum because they can have unintended environmental consequences that undermine conservation.”
 
This research was conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, University of Alabama, Ohio State University, Northern Arizona University, and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service with funding from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Cornell University and NASA.

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JOURNAL

Nature Sustainability

DOI

10.1038/s41893-024-01365-z 

ARTICLE TITLE

Intersection of Narco-Trafficking, Enforcement and Bird Conservation in the Americas

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jun-2024

PALEONTOLOGY

Ancient polar sea reptile fossil is oldest ever found in Southern Hemisphere

UPPSALA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

Reconstruction of the oldest sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere. Nothosaurs swimming along the ancient southern polar coast of what is now New ZEALAND AROUND 246 MILLION YEARS AGO. ARTWORK BY STAVROS KUNDROMICHALIS.

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CREDIT: STAVROS KUNDROMICHALIS

An international team of scientists has identified the oldest fossil of a sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere – a nothosaur vertebra found on New Zealand’s South Island. 246 million years ago, at the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs, New Zealand was located on the southern polar coast of a vast super-ocean called Panthalassa.

Reptiles first invaded the seas after a catastrophic mass extinction that devastated marine ecosystems and paved the way for the dawn of the Age of Dinosaurs almost 252 million years ago. Evidence for this evolutionary milestone has only been discovered in a few places around the world: on the Arctic island of Spitsbergen, northwestern North America and southwestern China. Although represented by just a single vertebra that was excavated from a boulder in a stream bed at the foot of Mount Harper on the South Island of New Zealand – this discovery has shed new light on the previously unknown record of early sea reptiles from the Southern Hemisphere.

Reptiles ruled the seas for millions of years before dinosaurs dominated the land. The most diverse and geologically longest surviving group were the sauropterygians, with an evolutionary history spanning over 180 million years. The group included the long-necked plesiosaurs, which resembled the popular image of the Loch Ness Monster. Nothosaurs were distant predecessors of the Plesiosaurs. They could grow up to seven metres long and swam using four paddle-like limbs. Nothosaurs had flattened skulls with a meshwork of slender conical teeth that were used to catch fish and squid.

The New Zealand nothosaur was discovered during a geological survey in 1978, but its importance was not fully recognised until palaeontologists from Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, Australia and East Timor joined their expertise to examine and analyse the vertebra and other associated fossils.

“The nothosaur found in New Zealand is over 40 million years older than the previously oldest known sauropterygian fossils from the Southern Hemisphere. We show that these ancient sea reptiles lived in a shallow coastal environment teeming with marine creatures within what was then the southern polar circle,” explains Dr Benjamin Kear from The Museum of Evolution at Uppsala University, lead author on the study.

The oldest nothosaur fossils are around 248 million years old and have been found along an ancient northern low-latitude belt that stretched from the remote northeastern to northwestern margins of the Panthalassa super-ocean. The origin, distribution and timing of when nothosaurs reached these distant areas are still debated. Some theories suggest that they either migrated along northern polar coastlines, or swam through inland seaways, or used currents to cross the Panthalassa super-ocean.

The new nothosaur fossil from New Zealand has now upended these long-standing hypotheses.

“Using a time-calibrated evolutionary model of sauropterygian global distributions, we show that nothosaurs originated near the equator, then rapidly spread both northwards and southwards at the same time as complex marine ecosystems became re-established after the cataclysmic mass extinction that marked the beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs” says Kear.

“The beginning of the Age of Dinosaurs was characterised by extreme global warming, which allowed these marine reptiles to thrive at the South Pole. This also suggests that the ancient polar regions were a likely route for their earliest global migrations, much like the epic trans-oceanic journeys undertaken by whales today. Undoubtedly, there are more fossil remains of long-extinct sea monsters waiting to be discovered in New Zealand and elsewhere in the Southern Hemisphere,” says Kear.

Original fossil of the New Zealand nothosaur vertebra. The oldest sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere. Image by Benjamin Kear

Computerised tomography image of the New Zealand nothosaur vertebra. The oldest sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere. Image by Aubrey Roberts.

Reconstruction of the New Zealand nothosaur. The oldest sea-going reptile from the Southern Hemisphere. Artwork by Johan Egerkrans

The New Zealand nothosaur fossil is held in the National Palaeontological Collection at GNS Science in New Zealand.

Article: Kear, B.P., Roberts, A.J., Young, G., Terezow, M., Mantle, D.J., Barros, I.S. & Hurum, J.H. 2024. Oldest southern sauropterygian reveals early marine reptile globalization. Current Biology 34, R1-R3. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.03.035

For further information:

Dr Benjamin Kear, Curator of Vertebrate Palaeontology and Researcher in Palaeontology at The Museum of Evolution, Uppsala University. Tel: +46 70-818 87 82 Email: benjamin.kear@em.uu.se

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JOURNAL

Current Biology

DOI

10.1016/j.cub.2024.03.035 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Oldest southern sauropterygian reveals early marine reptile globalization

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Jun-2024

No bones about it: 100-million-year-old bones reveal new species of pterosaur

CURTIN UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

HALISKIA PETERSENI

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CREDIT: BY GABRIEL UGUETO

New Curtin University-led research has identified 100-million-year-old fossilised bones discovered in western Queensland as belonging to a newly identified species of pterosaur, which was a formidable flying reptile that lived among the dinosaurs.

Unearthed in 2021 by Kronosaurus Korner museum curator Kevin Petersen, the fossilised remains have been found to belong to Haliskia peterseni, a new genus and species of anhanguerian pterosaur.

Based on the shape of its skull, arrangement of teeth and shape of the shoulder bone, a research team led by PhD student Adele Pentland, from Curtin’s School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, identified the specimen as an anhanguerian, which is a group of pterosaurs known to have lived across the world, including in what is now Brazil, England, Morocco, China, Spain and the United States.

“With a wingspan of approximately 4.6m, Haliskia would have been a fearsome predator around 100 million years ago when much of central western Queensland was underwater, covered by a vast inland sea and globally positioned about where Victoria’s southern coastline is today,” Ms Pentland said.

“Careful preparation by Mr Petersen has provided the remains of the most complete specimen of an anhanguerian, and of any pterosaur, discovered in Australia to date.

“Haliskia is 22 per cent complete, making it more than twice as complete as the only other known partial pterosaur skeleton found in Australia.

“The specimen includes complete lower jaws, the tip of the upper jaw, 43 teeth, vertebrae, ribs, bones from both wings and part of a leg. Also present are very thin and delicate throat bones, indicating a muscular tongue, which helped during feeding on fish and cephalopods.”

Haliskia peterseni joins several significant marine fossil specimens on display at Kronosaurus Korner, including Kronosaurus queenslandicus, the largest marine reptile with a skull at least 2.4m long, the most complete plesiosaur from Australia and bones from the plesiosaur Eromangasaurus and the ichthyosaur Platypterygius.

Mr Petersen said this latest discovery was an exciting boost for science, education and regional tourism.

“I’m thrilled that my discovery is a new species, as my passion lies in helping shape our modern knowledge of prehistoric species,” Mr Petersen said.

The full study titled ‘Haliskia peterseni, a new anhanguerian pterosaur from the late Early Cretaceous of Australia’ will be published in the journal Scientific Reports/Springer Nature (doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-60889-8).

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41598-024-60889-8 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animal tissue samples

ARTICLE TITLE

Haliskia peterseni, a new anhanguerian pterosaur from the late Early Cretaceous of Australia’

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jun-2024

Discovery of the microfossil Qingjiangonema from the 518-million-year-old Qingjiang biota sheds light on the adaptive evolution of sulfate-reducing bacteria in response to oxygenation in Earth’s history

SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

 

IMAGE: 

(A) OPTICAL PHOTOGRAPH OF A SOFT-BODIED MACROFOSSIL (SPECIMEN NO. CY266) OF UNKNOWN AFFINITY, WITH ABUNDANT FILAMENTOUS MICROFOSSILS OF Q. CAMBRIA (B–G) PRESENT ON THE SURFACE. (B) SEM IMAGE OF ROD-SHAPED CELLS, PHOTOGRAPHED AFTER ACID MACERATION, SHOWING EQUIMORPHIC AND EQUIDIMENSIONAL MICROCRYSTALS WITHIN EACH CELL. (C) SEM IMAGE, SHOWING A CELL EMBEDDED IN CLAYSTONE SEDIMENTS. (D, E) BSEM IMAGES, SHOWING MULTICELLULAR FILAMENTS. (F) SEM IMAGE OF A FOUR-CELL FILAMENT, SHOWING ELONGATED CELLS WITH A DIVISION GROOVE AT THE MID LENGTH (ARROWS). (I) BSEM IMAGE OF A FILAMENT COMPOSED OF CELLS OF VARIABLE LENGTH; NOTE CONSTRICTIONS BETWEEN NEIGHBORING CELLS.

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CREDIT: ©SCIENCE CHINA PRESS

Microbial sulfate reduction dating back to the Paleoarchean plays a crucial role in driving global carbon and sulfur cycles in ancient and modern Earth. Over 150 species of sulfate reducers from bacterial and archaeal phyla have been identified across a range of different environments. However, their origin is elusive and unequivocal fossils are lacking. Recently, a 518-million-year-old microbial fossil from China identified as an ancient sulfate-reducing bacterium sheds light on the adaptive evolution of sulfate-reducing bacteria in response to Earth’s oxygenation events. This new fossil, named as Qingjiangonema cambria, is reported by a research team led by Prof. Xingliang Zhang from the Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Early Life and Environments at Northwest University, Prof. Jinhua Li from the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGGCAS) and Prof. Yinzhao Wang from the School of Life Sciences and Biotechnology at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Qingjiangonema was discovered in black shales of the Shuijingtuo Formation that yields the Qingjiang biota, an early Cambrian Burgess Shale–type (BST) fossil Lagerstätte of South China. And it appears as a long filament comprising hundreds of rod-shaped cells. Cells are constricted at junctions, ∼1 to 3 μm wide and ∼0.8 to 11.0 μm long. Each cell is externally enveloped by a trilaminar ultrathin film and internally filled by equimorphic and equidimensional pyrite microcrystals. The unique chain-like morphology and its presence in black shales (cemented anoxic mud), provide crucial clues to determine the biological affinity of Qingjiangonema. The faithful replication of cell morphology by pyrite microcrystals infilling suggests that Qingjiangonema be able to precipitate minerals intracellularly when it was alive.

To further determine the physiology of Qingjiangonema, in situ sulfur isotope analyses of intracellular pyrite microcrystals using Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS) were carried out, and the result shows the intracellular pyrite microcrystals have a light sulfur isotope composition and large isotopic fractionation which are comparable to that of the modern Desulfonema in anoxic mud.

Interestingly, among the vast array of modern sulfate-reducing bacteria and their relatives, only the members of Desulfonema and cable bacteria within the phylum Desulfobacterota exhibit similar chain-like morphologies. Desulfonema species are filamentous sulfate reducers characterized by reducing sulfate under anoxic condition with a large sulfur isotope fractionation from sulfate to sulfide. The cable bacteria, however, are opposite in metabolism. They are aerobic sulfide-oxidizing bacteria well-known for long-distance electron transport over centimeter-scale distances and share canonical sulfate-reducing genes with the members in Desulfobacterota.

Overall, multiple lines of evidence including fossil morphology, living condition assessment and isotope analyses demonstrate that Qingjiangonema was a filamentous multicellular sulfate-reducing microfossil.

The discovery of this remarkable microfossil sheds light on the evolution of sulfate-reducing bacteria and cable bacteria. Phylogenomic and molecular clock analyses confirm an independent origin of multicellularity of Desulfonema and cable bacteria within the phylum Desulfobacterota. More importantly, these molecular biological analyses infer that Desulfobacterota, encompassing majorities of sulfate-reducing taxa, diverged ~2.4 billion years ago during the Paleoproterozoic Great Oxygenation Event (GOE), while cable bacteria diverged ~0.56 billion years ago during or after Neoproterozoic Oxygenation Event.

Taking together, the authors considered that Qingjiangonema cambria is either akin to Desulfonema or represents a sulfate-reducing ancestor to cable bacteria. They proposed that sulfate-reducing bacteria were firstly diversified in response to the increase of oceanic sulfate concentrations during the GOE and that sulfur-oxidizing cable bacteria evolved from a filamentous multicellular sulfate-reducing ancestor by reversal of the sulfate reduction pathway when large areas of the seafloor became oxygenated during or after the NOE.

See the article:

The Cambrian microfossil Qingjiangonema reveals the co-evolution of sulfate-reducing bacteria and the oxygenation of Earth’s surface

Ultrastructures of the microfossil Qingjiangonema cambria.

(a, b) SEM images of a Q. cambria on the macrofossil in Fig. 2a, indicating FIB milling positions of longitudinal and cross sections, respectively. (c) STEM-HAADF image of the ultrathin cross section in (b), showing microcrystals tightly packed within a thin envelope. (d) STEM-HAADF image of the ultrathin longitudinal section in (a), showing that neighboring cells are disconnected with intercellular boundaries, note that microcrystals are much smaller in the smaller cell than those in the larger neighboring cells. (e) Close-up of the boxed area in (c), showing the ultra-thin, multilayered film comparable to the typical cell envelope of Gram-negative bacteria, which comprises a cytoplasmic membrane (CM), a periplasmic space (PS) and an outer membrane (OM).

(a) Time tree of the major lineages of the phylum Desulfobacterota, with the sulfate-reducing Desulfonema and sulfide-oxidizing cable bacteria falling in two separate linages. (b) Evolution of Earth’s atmospheric oxygen content through time, PAL = present atmospheric level. (c) Simplified estimate for the history of seawater sulfate concentrations. Shaded areas crossing (a) to (c) represent time intervals of GOE and NOE, respectively, highlighting the coincidence between phylogenetic evolution of the sulfate-reducing bacteria and major increases of Earth’s atmospheric oxygen content as well as oceanic sulfate concentrations.

CREDIT

©Science China Press

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JOURNAL

Science Bulletin

DOI

10.1016/j.scib.2024.03.001 

 

Humans are the elephant in the room where conservation is debated

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: 

A BEAR IN FRAZER LAKE, ALASKA, PUTS A FINER POINT ON THE INTERSECTION OF PEOPLE AND NATURE.

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CREDIT: VERONICA FRANS, MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

Humans are outsized actors in the world’s wild places where there are struggles to preserve and protect vital natural resources and animals, birds and plants. Yet people and their plus-sized footprint are rarely discussed in models seeking to predict and plan for trajectories of endangered species.

Sustainability scholars at Michigan State University in this week’s journal Nature Ecology and Evolution reveal the decades-long gaps in research and propose a new way of creating accurate visions for endangered species.

To map and predict species geographic distributions around the globe and understand the factors that drive them, ecologists, conservation biologists and others use powerful computational tools called species distribution models (SDMs). These tools are used for conservation, understanding disease spread, food security, policy planning, and many other applications. To inform their predictions, scientists typically include the surrounding environment, such as climate and natural habitat.

But according to PhD candidate Veronica Frans, “we have a new reality that must be recognized if we want SDM predictions to be realistic and most helpful: we live in a human-dominated world.”

Frans and her advisor Jianguo “Jack” Liu, Rachel Carson chair in sustainability and director of MSU’s Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability, reviewed and synthesized 12,854 published studies covering over 58,000 species around the world, modeled across local to global spatial scales. They found that only 11 percent of those studies included human activities – which Frans said doesn’t reflect reality.

“Nearly half the articles projecting to future climates held human predictors constant over time,” Frans said. “That’s risking false optimism about the effects of human activities compared to climate change.”

They also found how scientists have been considering the future: nearly half of the SDM studies predicting species distributions have used different future climate scenarios but left data related to human activities constant over time. This means that modelers trying to understand where species will be distributed in the next 50 to 100 years were assuming human activities, development, infrastructure, and other human pressures will not change in the future.

“In our current era, human influence is pervasive and human-species interactions are diversifying and amplifying, and yet it is not being well accounted for in one of the most popular modeling tools in ecology,” Frans said.

They noted that modelers haven’t had a choice in the matter: geographic data on future human development have been sparse.

“This is an important aspect we must work to improve, since nature and humans are tightly linked, not only locally, but also across long distances” Liu said. “They form metacoupled human and natural systems. We will only be able to make significant and swift progress toward global sustainability when we consider all aspects of our real world.”

The article “Gaps and opportunities in modeling human influence on species distributions in the Anthropocene,” was funded by the National Science Foundation and Michigan AgBioResearch.

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JOURNAL

Nature Ecology & Evolution

DOI

10.1038/s41559-024-02435-3 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Literature review

ARTICLE TITLE

Gaps and opportunities in modeling human influence on species distributions in the Anthropocene

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

12-Jun-2024

 

APA poll finds younger workers feel stressed, lonely and undervalued

Nearly one-third of U.S. workers prefer working with people their own age

AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

Younger workers are struggling with feelings of loneliness and a lack of appreciation at work and tend to feel more comfortable working with people their own age, according to a survey by the American Psychological Association.

The 2024 Work in America survey, conducted online by The Harris Poll of more than 2,000 working U.S. adults, found that three in 10 U.S. workers reported that people in their organization who are not close to their age do not see the value in their ideas (32%). That number was significantly higher for workers aged 18-25 (48%) than for workers aged 65 and older (16%). Workers aged 18-25 and 26-43 were also significantly more likely than workers aged 44-57, 58-64 and 65+ to say that they feel more comfortable working with people their own age than with other age groups (62% and 57% vs. 42%, 38% and 27%).

While most working adults reported that they appreciate the opportunity to work with people of different ages (92%) and say that having colleagues from a range of age groups is an advantage for their workplace (87%), a quarter said that they are worried about job security because of their age. And nearly three in 10 U.S. workers (29%) said that they feel self-conscious about their age at work, including 43% of workers aged 18-25.

There are signs that younger workers may have difficulty connecting with their coworkers on a personal level as well; nearly half (45%) of workers aged 18-25 said they feel lonely when they are working, significantly more than workers aged 26-43 (33%), 44-57 (22%), 58-64 (15%) and 65+ (14%). They are also more likely than older workers to say they typically feel tense or stressed out during their workday (48% aged 18-25, 51% aged 26-43, and 42% aged 44-57 vs. 30% aged 58-64 and 17% aged 65+).

“With more workers retiring later in life, the demographics of the workplace are changing and younger workers seem to be having the hardest time adjusting. At the same time, with increased remote work and the use of new technologies like AI, younger and older workers alike are facing a paradigm shift around where and how we work,” said Arthur C. Evans Jr., PhD, APA’s chief executive officer. “To remain competitive, employers should invest in strategies that support their workers’ well-being and mental health to help them navigate these new norms and evolving professional landscape.”

Overall, a third of U.S. workers said they do not have enough control over when, where and how they do their work. One in three workers (33%) also said they are not working in their preferred location, be it remote, in person or a hybrid of the two. According to the survey, 59% of U.S. workers reported currently working all in person, 24% reported being hybrid and 17% reported working completely remotely. However, only 38% of workers reported they would prefer to work all in person, compared with 34% who reported preferring to work hybrid and 28% who reported preferring to work remotely.

Other key findings:

• The percentage of workers who reported that their employer offers four-day workweeks was significantly higher in 2024 than the previous two years (14% in 2022, 17% in 2023 and 22% in 2024). And two-thirds (67%) said they believe the four-day workweek will become standard in their lifetime.
• Employees’ use of AI is outpacing employer guidance, with more than one-third of workers (35%) who reported using AI monthly or more often to assist with their work. However, only 18% reported knowing that their employer has an official policy about acceptable uses of AI. Half of workers said their employer has no such policy, and close to one-third (32%) were unsure.
• A majority (67%) of workers reported experiencing at least one outcome often associated with workplace burnout in the last month, such as lack of interest, motivation, or low energy, feeling lonely or isolated and a lack of effort at work.

What also stood out was that workers who feel comfortable expressing themselves or raising difficult issues without fear of negative consequences – what psychologists call “psychological safety” – tend to report better experiences at work. Workers who experience higher levels of psychological safety are more likely than workers experiencing lower levels of psychological safety to say they feel like they belong (95% vs. 69%) and that they feel comfortable being themselves in the workplace (95% vs. 75%). They were also 10 times less likely to say their workplace is very or somewhat toxic than workers who experience lower levels of psychological safety (3% vs. 30%).

The poll found that people with disabilities reported experiencing a lack of psychological safety at work at an alarming rate, which could be linked to the negative impacts of ableism or unequal access to opportunities due to bias. Two-thirds of workers with a cognitive, emotional, learning or mental disability and a similar number of workers with a physical disability (63%) reported experiencing lower levels of psychological safety, compared with 45% of workers who did not report having a disability.

Workers with disabilities were more likely to report concerns about their workplaces. Less than half (48%) of individuals living with a cognitive, emotional, learning or mental disability described their company’s culture as one that respects time off, compared with 63% of those not living with a disability. And 57% of workers with physical disabilities reported concern that AI may make some or all of their job duties obsolete in the near future, compared with 37% of workers who did not report having a disability.

“Our survey findings underscore the need for employers to create psychologically safe work environments for their employees,” Evans said. “We know from research that psychological safety not only enhances individual employee well-being but strengthens the organization by fostering a culture of creativity, innovation and effective teamwork, which ultimately helps to improve the bottom line.”

For more information from the latest Work in America survey, see the “2024 Work in America: Psychological Safety in the Changing Workplace” report.

Methodology

The research was conducted online in the United States by The Harris Poll on behalf of the American Psychological Association among 2,027 employed adults. The survey was conducted March 25-April 3, 2024. Data are weighted where necessary by age by gender, race/ethnicity, region, education, marital status, household size, work status, household income, and smoking status to bring them in line with their actual proportions in the population. A full methodology is available.