Modern slavery is a business decision – not an accident

University of Surrey

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Modern slavery persists because the way global supply chains are designed allows it to remain hidden, according to new research led by Professor Glenn Parry from the University of Surrey and Dr Mike Rogerson at the University of Sussex.  The findings argue that exploitation often stems from business decisions that cut costs by pushing work further down the supply chain, leaving companies with little direct contact with workers and less visibility over how they are treated. 

Around 27 million people worldwide are estimated to be living in conditions of modern slavery, embedded within the production of everyday goods and services. While governments have introduced laws to force companies to report on risks, the research suggests that disclosure alone is not changing behaviour in a meaningful way. 

Instead, firms often maintain distance from the most vulnerable parts of their supply chains. This distance can be geographical, organisational or even digital, such as the use of algorithms that control workers without direct oversight. As a result, companies rely on indirect signals rather than engaging directly with workers, leaving serious gaps in knowledge and accountability. 

The special issue on “Modern Slavery and Supply Chain Management”, published in Supply Chain Management, brings together insights from multiple international studies across sectors including construction, social care, logistics and global manufacturing. Drawing on interviews with practitioners, workers and experts, as well as analysis of corporate reports and policy frameworks, the work examines how governance, partnerships and digital systems shape labour conditions across complex supply networks. 

Glenn Parry, co-editor of the issue and Professor of Digital Transformation at the University of Surrey, said: 

"Modern slavery is a problem buried in supply chain structures and it is often the result of how those chains are built and managed. When companies prioritise cost and efficiency above all else, they create the conditions where exploitation can thrive." 

The research found that many organisations focus on compliance, reporting and audits, yet fail to build the relationships and trust needed to identify and tackle exploitation. In some cases, competitive pressures and mistrust between firms actively prevent collaboration that could reduce risks. 

It also finds that partnerships between businesses, governments and NGOs can help, but only when they are built on genuine understanding and shared goals. Superficial collaboration risks becoming a tick-box exercise rather than a driver of real change. 

A major recommendation is to shift focus from reporting to knowledge. Companies need to invest in understanding their supply chains in depth, including listening directly to workers. Bringing “upstream voices” into decision making is seen as critical to designing effective anti-slavery measures. 

Professor Glenn Parry added: 

"If we are serious about tackling modern slavery, we need to stop treating supply chain complexity as an excuse. It is often a choice. That means it can be changed." 

ENDS 

Note to editors 

• For interviews, please contact the University of Surrey press office: mediarelations@surrey.ac.uk 

• Published in Supply Chain Management: An International Journal 

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DOI

10.1108/SCM-08-2026-966 

Article Title

Modern slavery and supply chain management Available

Article Publication Date

7-Jul-2026

 

People with disabilities are diagnosed with alcohol use disorder at much higher rates than non-disabled people in US

A new study found that adults with disabilities had more than three times the rate of alcohol use disorder diagnoses compared to adults without disabilities in the US

Boston University School of Public Health

A new study found that adults with disabilities had more than three times the rate of AUD diagnoses compared to adults without disabilities in the US, with particularly high rates among disabled men, as well as people with serious mental illness and acquired brain injuries.

Although people with disabilities are less likely to drink alcohol than people without disabilities, a new study led by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) researchers has found that disabled adults have strikingly higher rates of diagnosed alcohol use disorder (AUD) than non-disabled adults in the United States. 

Published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports, the study found that adults with disabilities received AUD diagnoses at more than three times the rate of adults without disabilities between 2016-2023. 

The study builds upon previous research suggesting that people with disabilities are vulnerable to excessive drinking, and it is the first study to explore differences in AUD diagnoses by disability status and type among commercially insured adults, focusing on a study group of more than 42 million people. Adults with serious mental illness, such as severe depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, had the highest rates of AUD at more than 10 times the rate of non-disabled adults. Adults with acquired brain injuries, such as traumatic brain injury and stroke, had the second-highest rates of AUD, at over 5 times the rate of non-disabled adults. Importantly, adults with all types of disabilities had higher rates of AUD than adults without disabilities. 

Notably, the study also identified differences by sex; men with disabilities had the highest rates of AUD, but women with disabilities had higher rates of AUD than both non-disabled men and women. 

As AUD is a chronic condition linked to an increased risk for alcohol-related morbidity and mortality, these findings highlight the need for health providers to be aware that patients with disabilities are at high risk for AUD so that they can provide tailored AUD screening and treatment to patients with disabilities. 

“The disability community is not a homogenous population, and certain subgroups are at even higher risk for AUD and associated adverse outcomes,” says study lead and corresponding author Dr. Rachel Sayko Adams, research associate professor of health law, policy & management (HLPM) at BUSPH. “We know that people with serious mental illnesses and traumatic brain injuries are at greater risk of developing AUD, so the high rates of AUD diagnoses that we observed are not surprising, yet they are alarming.”

The study is funded by a $3.4 million grant that Dr. Adams received with Dr. Sharon Reif, professor at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University and coauthor of the study, from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in 2023. 

For the analysis, Dr. Adams, Dr. Reif, and colleagues from BUSPH, Boston Medical Center (BMC), BU Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine, the Disability Policy Consortium, and The Ohio State University examined data by disability status and type, and sex, among more than 42 million US adults ages 18-64 with employer-sponsored commercial health insurance from 2016-2023.

Overall rates of AUD increased at an annual average of 5.4 percent during the study period, from 85 per 10,000 people in 2016 to 128 per 10,000 people in 2023. AUD diagnosis rates increased from 223.4 per 10,000 in 2016 to 312.2 per 10,000 in 2023 for adults with disabilities, compared to 61 per 10,000 in 2016 to 94.3 per 10,000 in 2023 for adults without disabilities. 

“Over the seven years of our study, diagnosed AUD increased by more than 50 percent with no sign of reversing, with disabled people at more than three times the risk of developing AUD compared to their non-disabled peers,” says Dr. Jake Morgan, research assistant professor of HLPM at BUSPH and study senior author. “This gap in AUD risk between adults with and without disabilities will not close on its own and demands targeted action from clinicians and public health professionals.” 

While people with serious mental illness maintained the highest rates of AUD during the entire study period, the results revealed concerning trends among people with other disabilities; for example, people with intellectual and developmental disabilities had lower-than-average rates of AUD among disabled people overall, but experienced an increase in diagnosed AUD rates by an average of more than nine percent each year during the study period. 

“While we need more information about why people with disabilities are more likely to develop AUD, this increased risk is likely impacted by the higher rates of unemployment, depression, trauma, isolation, chronic pain, and stigma experienced by disabled people,” says study coauthor Mr. Dennis Heaphy, DMin, MPH, lead researcher and health justice advocate at the Disability Policy Consortium.

What the findings revealed about heavy drinking among women with disabilities was striking, the researchers say. The fact that women with disabilities had higher AUD rates than men without disabilities likely reflects the narrowing gap in binge drinking between males and females. 

“It is unprecedented to see such a large group of women with higher rates of AUD compared to men,” says Dr. Adams. “It is critical that clinicians understand that women with disabilities are at particularly high risk of AUD, given that women are uniquely vulnerable to alcohol-related health conditions, injuries, and death.” 

The researchers say clinicians should be prepared to recognize AUD among people with all types of disabilities, not just those for which substance use is already known to be a more common issue. By being informed about the unique and varied experiences of people within the broad disability populations, clinicians will be better positioned to inquire about and understand the underlying causes contributing to their patients’ excessive drinking and prevent development of AUD and associated harms.

This insight can also help prevent clinicians from harboring biases or stigma towards people who are disabled and/or who experience substance use disorders. Prior research suggests that only half of physicians in the US felt confident about their ability to provide the same quality care to disabled patients as those without disabilities.

“Due to stigma, there is an erroneous assumption that people with disabilities either do not drink or will not benefit from alcohol treatment,” says Mr. Heaphy. “For disabled people with AUD, this stigma is coupled with bias in the addiction treatment system itself, which creates barriers to care that can be challenging to overcome.”

Following these critical findings, the research team is conducting additional studies within both the Medicaid and commercial insurance populations to evaluate if people with disabilities have reduced access to or quality of AUD treatment. 

“These striking findings warrant a call to action for clinicians and public health professionals to recognize that disabled people should not be overlooked as being at risk for excessive drinking and AUD,” Dr. Adams says. “It is imperative that we train clinicians to screen their patients with disabilities for excessive alcohol use to prevent development of AUD, and to provide person-centered alcohol treatment options for disabled patients when needed.”

The study was also coauthored by Yassir Mohamed, PhD student in health services and policy research at BUSPH, Dr. Maureen Stewart, research associate professor of HLPM at BUSPH; Dr. Marc LaRochelle, general internist and clinical investigator at BMC and associate professor at the Chobanian & Avedisian School; Dr. John Corrigan, academy professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Ohio State; and Dr. Fatema Shafie Khorassani, assistant professor of biostatistics at BUSPH.

Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism of the National Institutes of Health under award R01AA031236, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse under award P30DA040500). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

** 

About Boston University School of Public Health 

Founded in 1976, Boston University School of Public Health is one of the top ten ranked schools of public health in the world. It offers master's- and doctoral-level education in public health. The faculty in six departments conduct policy-changing public health research around the world, with the mission of improving the health of populations—especially the disadvantaged, underserved, and vulnerable—locally and globally.

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Journal

Drug and Alcohol Dependence Reports

DOI

10.1016/j.dadr.2026.100461 

Method of Research

Observational study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Alcohol use disorder diagnoses among commercially insured US adults from 2016 to 2023, by disability status and sex

 

How academic freedom is threatened – and how resilience of research can be actively strengthened

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

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In Germany, too, academic freedom and the autonomy of research must be defended against increasing hostility and attacks. Meeting this challenge is first and foremost the responsibility of the research ecosystem itself and of everyone working within it. Researchers and research organisations in particular can and should actively strengthen the resilience of research by identifying their own vulnerabilities, making determined use of the possibilities available to them and working together with other stakeholders in the areas of politics, business and society at large.

 

These are the central arguments of a position paper recently published by a DFG Senate working group. Against the backdrop of current developments and incidents in Germany and numerous other countries, the paper describes threats to academic freedom and outlines options for protecting and strengthening it.

 

The paper is the second publication issued by the working group, which comprises members of the DFG Senate and Executive Committee and is chaired by Vice Presidents Professor Dr. Britta Siegmund and Professor Dr. Johannes Grave. The group was established last year to develop proposals aimed at enhancing the resilience of academia and the research ecosystem across multiple domains. In its first statement, published in March 2026, it presented “Recommendations on the Resilience of Research Data Infrastructures”.

 

The new “Position Paper on Strengthening the Academic Freedom and Resilience of Research” was prepared over recent months by the working group in consultation with both German and international experts from academia, business and society. The paper was most recently presented to and discussed by the DFG’s statutory bodies in the course of the annual meeting of Germany's largest research funding organisation and central self-governing organisation for science and the humanities at the end of June.

 

A wide range of threats

 

The paper begins by outlining in concise form the ways in which academic freedom  is coming under increasing pressure, in particular by identifying the actors involved and their motives. Attacks may target individual researchers and their views, as has already frequently been the case, as well as specific fields of research and research institutions. There are also attempts to discredit academic research or attribute malicious intentions to it.

More far-reaching are attacks that seek to weaken public funding for research, gain control over a research ecosystem or, in the context of geopolitical crises and wars, threaten a national research system as a whole.

 

In each case, the paper offers examples, including developments in the United States and Hungary and the war in Ukraine, while also citing instances of occurrences in Germany, such as the hostility directed at virologists during the COVID-19 pandemic and the AfD’s “government programme” for the forthcoming state election in Saxony-Anhalt.

 

Vulnerabilities and protection

 

In the second part of the paper, the authors argue that such attacks are sometimes facilitated by potential or existing vulnerabilities inherent in the conduct of research and within the research ecosystem itself. For example, the paper notes that opponents are afforded additional opportunities for attack when the impression is created that the research community itself is restricting academic freedom through self-censorship or ”cancel culture”. The paper further contends that research is particularly vulnerable to attack when it is perceived as lacking effective quality assurance and self-regulation, or when the research community is viewed as an insular elite retreating into a fortress mentality. The paper also argues that the research ecosystem is potentially weakened as a result of overly optimistic assumptions and unrealistic expectations about the rationality of its opponents, a lack of solidarity within the research community, and the misleading notion that the research ecosystem is apolitical and therefore need not defend itself.

 

In addition, the paper identifies specific vulnerabilities within the German research ecosystem, including individual risks arising from dependency relationships and inappropriately short-term employment contracts.

 

The third section explores the institutional and legal safeguards that protect academic freedom despite the wide range of challenges it faces. Chief among these is the constitutional guarantee of the freedom of research and teaching, enshrined as a fundamental right in Germany's Basic Law.

 

The paper also emphasises that research in Germany is firmly embedded in both the economy and society. Its contribution to economic and social development, together with the high level of public trust it enjoys, means that attacks on academic freedom are likely to meet resistance far beyond academia.

 

Where action is possible – and needed

 

Building on this analysis, the paper outlines a range of options for strengthening resilience through preventive action. These include fostering close and trusting cooperation among researchers and research organisations, as well as building alliances with business and civil society. In order to improve preparedness, the authors also call for expanded research into the programmes and strategies of those who oppose academic freedom and, more broadly, into the relationship between academia, politics and society.

 

In addition, high standards of academic self-governance and self-regulation must be continuously reinforced and safeguarded.

The paper further argues that the research community must engage in more critical self-reflection, not least to develop a clearer understanding of the distinctions between research-based knowledge and other forms of knowledge, as well as between scientific findings and opinion. It likewise calls for authentic science communication that conveys not only scientific achievements but also the provisional nature of knowledge, the limits of current understanding, and the uncertainties, setbacks and iterative character of the research process. At the institutional level, the authors advocate strengthening procedures, statutes and decision-making processes to make them more resilient to misuse, identifying unanimity requirements as one example of institutional vulnerability. Finally, the paper argues that preventive action is also required to enhance research security and safeguard research infrastructures.

 

Like the paper itself, these recommendations are addressed primarily to the research ecosystem and those working within it. At the same time, however, the authors identify a wider circle of actors with whom collaborative action is required to safeguard academic freedom and strengthen the resilience of the research ecosystem. These include policymakers, the federal and state ministries responsible for research, and the federal–state bodies responsible for coordinating research policy. Their involvement is considered particularly important in reducing the individual uncertainties and risks faced by researchers, as well as in shielding research from political interference exercised through financial pressure.

 

In the event of specific attacks on academic freedom, the working group further recommends that the research community and its institutions consider public forms of protest where appropriate. It also emphasises the importance of practical solidarity and mutual support at both the individual and institutional levels, for example through a ”collective duty of mutual assistance”. Finally, it notes that the constitutional protection of academic freedom provides a basis for legal action where judicial remedies offer an effective response.

 

 

Further Information

 

The full text of the Position Paper on Strengthening the Academic Freedom and Resilience of Research: https://zenodo.org/records/21353471

 

Further information and material on the topic of the resilience of research: https://zenodo.org/records/21353471

 

Media contact:

Marco Finetti, Head of Press and Public Relations at the DFG, Tel. +49 228 885-2109, presse@dfg.de

 

The two chairs of the Senate ad hoc working group are available for interviews on the position paper. Individual members of the working group are also available to discuss specific subject areas. Interview requests will be coordinated by the DFG Press and Public Relations department.

 

Scrolling for study helps, scrolling for fun hurts: new research on nursing students’ social media use and wellbeing

Purpose of using Social Media

Bentham Science Publishers

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A recent study on nursing students’ social media usage suggests that social media use can affect wellbeing, depending on the purpose.

The study was led by Dr. Mohamed Goda Elbqry, with co-authors Dr. Fatma Mohamed Elmansy, Dr. Noha Mohammed Ibrahim, Dr. Saddam Ahmed Al‑Ahdal, and Dr. Fatima S. O. Ashmieg, from Qassim University (Saudi Arabia) and Suez Canal University (Egypt). The team published their findings in The Open Nursing Journal (Bentham Open).

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Purpose of using Social Media

Social media is woven into the daily lives of university students, but its impact depends on how it is used. A nursing student who turns to platforms for lecture notes, assignment collaboration, or clinical case discussions engages in a fundamentally different practice than one who spends hours on entertainment feeds or constant social messaging. A new study published in The Open Nursing Journal asked a critical question: Does the purpose behind social media use determine whether it supports or undermines students’ life satisfaction?

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The Study
 
Researchers surveyed 298 undergraduate nursing internship students (128 males, 170 females; average age just over 21) at Al‑Razi University, Sanaa, Yemen, between April and August 2025. Using four validated questionnaires, the team measured academic, social, and entertainment use of social media, levels of addiction, and overall life satisfaction. The study followed STROBE guidelines for observational research, with structural equation modelling applied to map relationships among variables.

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Key Findings

The results revealed that academic use of social media, such as for coursework, exam preparation, or peer learning, was associated with higher life satisfaction and lower risk of addiction. In contrast, entertainment-driven use emerged as the strongest predictor of addictive behaviour, with a path coefficient more than three times larger than social use. Social media addiction itself was independently linked to lower life satisfaction and partially mediated the effects of all three types of use. The indirect negative effect of entertainment use on life satisfaction (β = -0.235) was considerably stronger than that of social use (β = -0.078), while academic use showed a modest positive indirect effect (β = 0.069).

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Implications for Universities and Students

The findings highlight that not all social media time is equal. Purposeful academic engagement enhances wellbeing, while compulsive recreational use erodes it. Universities should consider implementing digital wellness programmes that help students distinguish between academic and recreational use, alongside policies that restrict non-academic platform access during study hours and counselling or peer support for students showing signs of addiction. Given nursing students’ high academic and clinical stress, such measures could meaningfully improve wellbeing. The authors note limitations, including the single-institution sample, reliance on self-reports, and cross-sectional design. Future longitudinal and multi-site studies are needed.

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Read the published article here: https://bit.ly/4gYfD9i

JOURNAL

The Open Nursing Journal

DOI: 10.2174/0118744346482130260606204339

Interested in publishing your Research? Learn more here: https://bit.ly/4de0DRi

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Journal

The Open Nursing Journal

DOI

10.2174/0118744346482130260606204339 

Article Title

Social Media Addiction among Nursing Students as a Partial Mediator between Academic Social Media Use and Life Satisfaction: A Cross-Sectional Study

 

UT San Antonio study finds word choice is linked to depression and anxiety symptoms in 911 dispatchers

The study demonstrates how natural language processing can evaluate the psychological well-being of a critical but historically under-researched workforce.

University of Texas at San Antonio

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Emergency call takers and dispatchers serve as the invisible frontline of public safety, navigating life-or-death crises over phone lines and radios without ever seeing the outcomes of their efforts. Now, a new study from UT San Antonio reveals that the specific words these workers use to describe their most stressful calls can provide early, hidden warning signs of depression and anxiety.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal PLOS One, the study demonstrates how natural language processing — a branch of artificial intelligence — can evaluate the psychological well-being of a critical but historically under-researched workforce.

The research team, led by College for Health, Community and Policy psychology professors Vivian Ta-Johnson, PhD, and Sandra B. Morissette, PhD, analyzed written narratives from 106 emergency communications personnel. The study was conducted in collaboration with the San Antonio Police Department and support from Bexar Metro 911.

“This collaboration is critical to advancing science and well-being in 911 telecommunicators,” said Morissette, who took the lead in establishing the San Antonio community partnerships.

A persistent occupational gap

Emergency call takers and dispatchers are routinely subjected to indirect, continuous trauma by managing high-volume calls involving violence, injury and death. Yet, they face a severe occupational gap. Unlike field-based first responders such as police officers or firefighters, dispatch center workers in many jurisdictions are denied official first-responder classification, limiting their access to dedicated wellness-related resources and funding streams.

“They are the first first responders, but they often don’t get the same kind of support,” explained Ta-Johnson.

They also face a unique psychological toll because they lack closure.

“A common theme is the lingering uncertainty following intense and distressing calls,” Ta-Johnson said, reflecting on the narratives she read. “It’s not uncommon for emergency call takers and dispatchers to wonder what happened and whether the person they were talking to got the help they needed. They usually don’t get that information directly because it’s always on to the next call.”

Measuring emotional tone versus intensity

To understand how this chronic stress shapes mental health, researchers asked participants to complete a standard self-report assessment for depression, anxiety and stress before typing out detailed descriptions of a high-stress workplace event.

Ta-Johnson’s team analyzed these testimonies using natural language processing tools that draw from a validated database of roughly 14,000 English words, each rated on several emotional factors. Using these ratings, the researchers quantified two key dimensions of emotional reactivity reflected in participants’ language: valence, which measures the emotional tone from positive to negative, and arousal, which measures the emotional intensity from calm to excited or panicked.

The results showed that narratives containing a higher proportion of negatively valenced words — such as “blood,” “danger,” “hate” and “shoot”— reliably predicted more acute symptoms of depression and anxiety. Follow-up tests confirmed that individuals meeting clinical thresholds for moderate or higher depressive and anxiety symptoms used significantly more negative language than those below the threshold.

While emergency call takers and dispatchers all experience objectively negative scenarios through their calls, the words they choose to describe the calls can shed light on their subjective, emotional interpretation of the calls, Ta-Johnson explained.

“What stood out was the use of more negatively valenced language, which appears to reflect not just what they experienced, but how they are processing those experiences psychologically,” she added.

Surprisingly, the intensity or arousal level of the language did not predict anxiety, depression, or stress symptoms.

“The experiences they described were all pretty emotionally intense, like suicides and medical emergencies,” Ta-Johnson said. “Language reflecting intensity is, to some extent, an unavoidable part of the profession.”

The findings also suggest that positive and negative word choices operate on independent tracks of emotional expression rather than as direct opposites. While highly negative language flagged mental health risks, a lack of positive words did not necessarily mean a call taker or dispatcher was struggling. In chronically high-stress professions, positive expressions are often suppressed or contextually constrained by the nature of the job rather than poor mental health.

Implementing proactive wellness support

The researchers emphasized that these language-based AI tools are not designed to diagnose mental health conditions, monitor employees punitively or replace human therapists. Instead, they hope the findings will lead to simple wellness tools that can be integrated into regular workplace protocols and used to support the employees who opt in.

For example, call takers and dispatchers could complete periodic, brief written reflections that language software could screen to flag individuals who might benefit from extra mental health resources. This unobtrusive strategy could be pivotal for first responders, who frequently hesitate to seek mental health support due to structural workload demands and workplace stigma.

Looking ahead, Ta-Johnson and Morissette plan to explore whether changing how telecommunicators narrate their trauma — such as writing in a more positive or past-tense frame — can influence reactions to trauma over time, including during narrative writing treatment interventions. They are also in the early stages of establishing partnerships with other police departments and telecommunication divisions to replicate and expand this research.

Co-authors on the paper include UT San Antonio psychology doctoral students, Isabella M. Swafford and Paige Lindsey, psychology postdoctoral fellow, Liliane D. Efinger, PhD, and Assistant Professor of Instruction, Janelle Kohler, PhD, alongside Michael Fernandez of the San Antonio Police Department and researchers from the Warriors Research Institute, Baylor Scott & White Health, Texas A&M University and the Baylor College of Medicine.

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Journal

PLOS One

Article Title

Linguistic markers of emotional reactivity and their association with anxiety, depression, and stress among emergency call takers and dispatchers

Article Publication Date

8-Jul-2026

 

Ultrafine particles in the air: Global study attributes nearly two million premature deaths a year

First high-resolution global exposure map shows about half of the excess deaths from ultrafine particle pollution are due to cardiovascular disease

Max Planck Institute for Chemistry

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Unlike fine particulate matter (PM2.5), which is subject to legal limit values in the EU and the US, ultrafine particles remain unregulated. Although they contribute little to particulate mass, their small size gives them a very large surface area relative to their mass, allowing them to penetrate deep into the lungs, bypass respiratory defences, and reach the bloodstream and, via the olfactory pathway through the nose, the brain directly. This makes them fundamentally different from larger particulate matter.

A Global Exposure Map at 1-Kilometre Resolution

For the study, the team combined satellite data, land-use information and measurements from 155 locations worldwide with machine learning to map long-term exposure to ultrafine particles at a high resolution of one kilometre for the first time, covering the period from 2010 to 2019. Annual mean concentrations in cities typically range between 10,000 and 30,000 particles per cubic centimetre. The researchers present a range—referred to as a 95% confidence interval—for the estimate of 1.99 million premature deaths, indicating that there is 95% certainty that the true number of deaths falls between 0.81 million and 3.89 million.

Using a meta-analysis of large cohort studies from Europe and North America, the researchers also derived a mortality hazard ratio and combined it with the exposure data. The result: a mortality density of 35.7 (confidence interval: 15.8–65.5) per 100,000 people per year in Europe and 27.4 (confidence interval: 12.9–47.4) per 100,000 in North America. Exposure and mortality are particularly high in Southern and Eastern Europe. Globally, about 91 percent of UFP-related excess deaths occur in urban and suburban areas, with 78 percent in densely populated urban centres.

“Ultrafine particles are literally a blind spot in air quality policy: they are not covered by any regulation, even though they are ubiquitous in our cities. With our data, we can for the first time show worldwide where exposure is highest and which sources are responsible – above all combustion in traffic, industry and energy production. This gives policymakers a concrete tool to take targeted action.”

Prof. Dr. Jos Lelieveld, Director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and lead author of the study

A Particular Danger to the Cardiovascular System

The study highlights that ultrafine particles are an underrecognised cardiovascular risk factor. They can cross the lungs into the bloodstream, trigger systemic oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction, promote atherosclerosis, and are linked to hypertension, diabetes, heart failure, myocardial infarction and impaired coronary microcirculation. Animal and human studies also show effects on cardiac function and cellular metabolism, extending to impaired mitochondrial function – the cell’s powerhouses.

“What is particularly alarming for us in cardiology is that ultrafine particles bypass the body’s natural protective barriers and can reach the bloodstream – and even the brain – directly. In our own work, we see how the cardiovascular system responds to this exposure: with oxidative stress, damaged blood vessels, and an increased risk of heart attack and stroke. Roughly half of the deaths caused by ultrafine particles worldwide are due to cardiovascular disease. That makes one thing clear: clean air is heart health. We urgently need binding limit values and routine monitoring of ultrafine particles, just as we already have for fine particulate matter.”

Univ.-Prof. Dr. Thomas Münzel, Senior professor at the Center for Cardiology at the University Medical Center Mainz

Combustion as the Main Source – Lower Limit Values Could Prevent Many Deaths

According to the researchers’ analysis, ultrafine particles in polluted regions consist mainly of black and organic carbon – typical combustion products. Globally, around 75 percent of exposure originates from fossil fuels, rising to over 90 percent in high-income countries; in lower-income countries, domestic wood burning also plays a significant role. The World Health Organization (WHO) and the European Union now classify ultrafine particles as a “contaminant of emerging concern.”

The Mainz study also shows that an annual limit value of 5,000 particles per cubic centimetre could reduce global excess mortality from ultrafine particles by around 45 percent. The authors therefore call for a consistent reduction of combustion emissions in cities – particularly from traffic, industry and energy production – accelerated expansion of non-fossil energy sources, and the inclusion of ultrafine particles in routine air quality monitoring to better capture their long-term health impact.

About the Study

The study, “Air quality and health implications of exposure to ultrafine particle pollution,” was produced by an international team led by Prof. Jos Lelieveld (Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, and The Cyprus Institute), in collaboration with Dr. Pantelis Georgiades (Cyprus Institute) and researchers from the University of Helsinki, King Saud University, the Cyprus Institute, and the Department of Cardiology at Mainz University Medical Center (Prof. Dr. Thomas Münzel; the latter is also affiliated with the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK), Rhine-Main campus).

The study was funded in part through the EU Horizon Europe projects CATALYSE, EMME-CARE and MARKOPOLO. The underlying global data are freely available via the Zenodo repository (zenodo.org/records/14832351).

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Journal

Cardiovascular Research

DOI

10.1093/cvr/cvag136 

Method of Research

Data/statistical analysis

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Air quality and health implications of exposure to ultrafine particle pollution

Article Publication Date

8-Jul-2026