Latest news with #highaltitude
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Health
- Yahoo
There's A Serious Reason Why You Should Be Extra Careful If You Have The Window Seat On A Plane, And I Truly Never Would've Guessed This
Earlier this year, TikTok user FindingFiona uploaded a travel video that got serious attention, garnering more than 2 million views and 1,000 comments. In the post, she emphasized the importance of wearing sunscreen on flights, citing reports of people incurring more sun damage when they're at higher altitudes. 'Even though you're inside the aircraft, because of the high altitudes, you're actually experiencing stronger UV radiation, especially if you're in the window seat,' she says in the video. According to dermatologists, the TikToker's claim is partially correct — but it's also a little wrong. 'The good news is that the true risk from one flight, or somebody who flies occasionally, is probably low,' said Dr. Elizabeth Jones, an assistant professor of dermatology at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia. But Jones noted that for flight crew members and pilots, the risk is higher. 'People who are flying occupationally, they're going to be exposed much more to ultraviolet light given — especially if they're in the cockpit — the size of the windshield,' and given all the time they spend at a higher altitude, she said. Jones pointed to a 2015 study that found pilots and cabin crew have roughly twice the incidence of melanoma, a less common but more serious form of skin cancer, when compared to the general population. So, there is a connection between flying and sun damage. Below, dermatologists explain what you should know about your sun damage risk when you're at cruising altitude. Airplane windows block out most UVB rays, but not all UVA rays. 'Airplane windows effectively block out most of the UVB rays,' Jones said, referring to the rays that can cause sunburn and skin cancer. So even if you're sitting in the window seat, you likely won't end up with sunburn after a flight. But that doesn't mean other damage can't occur. This is also true for non-airplane windows, said Dr. Jennifer Holman, a dermatologist with U.S. Dermatology Partners Tyler in Texas. 'Most typical windows in a house or a car are going to filter out ... like 97%, 98% of the UVB radiation, which is typically the wavelength that people think of that causes sunburns,' she said. While windows block these rays, they don't block all rays. According to Jones, airplane windows don't fully keep out UVA rays, which can 'cause premature aging, wrinkles and ultimately can contribute to skin cancer as well.' (Jones did note, however, that 'some of the older windows block out about 50% of UVA rays' and 'some of the newer models are more effective at even blocking out UVA.') Again, this goes beyond airplanes: Holman said most glass windows, including your car windows and the windows at your local coffee shop, also don't offer UVA protection. In general, 'most glass does not filter out UVA,' she noted. Wearing sunscreen on a plane can protect you from these harmful rays, which Holman said penetrate 'more deeply into the skin' and put you 'at risk for different types of skin cancer, including the most deadly form of skin cancer, melanoma.' So, who needs sunscreen on an airplane? The short answer: everyone. Sunscreen is important for folks to wear daily, whether or not you're taking a flight. 'As a dermatologist, of course, I'm encouraging all of my patients to wear their sunscreen as a daily habit every day, just for the exposures that we face and the free radicals that are out in the world from UV radiation,' Holman said. While it is important for everyone to wear sunscreen on a plane, Jones said certain people should take particular caution. 'Who should consider wearing sunscreen on a plane?' she said. 'Certainly, someone with a personal or family history of skin cancer may want to get that added protection by using a sunscreen.' Folks with fair skin who are more sensitive to the sun should consider that added protection, too. The same goes for people with medical conditions that make them susceptible to sun damage, and people who are on medication that increases sun sensitivity, Jones noted. Holman said that when shopping for sunscreen, you should find one that's labeled 'broad-spectrum,' meaning it protects against both UVA and UVB rays. This is always necessary, including on a plane when you aren't protected from that UVA light. Beyond sunscreen, Holman stressed that other protections are also helpful. 'The importance of physical protection, too ― wearing hats, sun protective clothing, sunglasses ― all those things continue to be important as we're protecting ourselves from ultraviolet exposure,' she said. This article originally appeared in HuffPost.
Yahoo
22-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Humans Are Evolving Right in Front of Our Eyes on The Tibetan Plateau
Humans are not yet done cooking. We're continuing to evolve and adjust to the world around us, the records of our adaptations written in our bodies. We know that there are some environments that can make us unwell. Mountain climbers often succumb to altitude sickness – the body's reaction to a significant drop in atmospheric pressure, which means less oxygen is taken in with each breath. And yet, in high altitudes on the Tibetan Plateau, where oxygen levels in the air people breathe are notably lower than lower altitudes, human communities thrive. In the more than 10,000 years the region has been settled, the bodies of those living there have changed in ways that allow the inhabitants to make the most of an atmosphere that for most humans would result in not enough oxygen being delivered via blood cells to the body's tissues, a condition known as hypoxia. "Adaptation to high-altitude hypoxia is fascinating because the stress is severe, experienced equally by everyone at a given altitude, and quantifiable," anthropologist Cynthia Beall of Case Western Reserve University in the US told ScienceAlert. "It is a beautiful example of how and why our species has so much biological variation." Beall has been studying the human response to hypoxic living conditions for years. In research published in October 2024, she and her team unveiled some of the specific adaptations in Tibetan communities: traits that help the blood deliver oxygen. To unlock this discovery, the researchers delved into one of the markers of what we call evolutionary fitness: reproductive success. Women who deliver live babies are those who pass on their traits to the next generation. The traits that maximize an individual's success in a given environment are most likely to be found in women who are able to survive the stresses of pregnancy and childbirth. These women are more likely to give birth to more babies; and those babies, having inherited survivability traits from their mothers, are also more likely to survive to adulthood, and pass the traits on to the next generation. That's natural selection at work, and it can be a bit strange and counterintuitive; in places where malaria is common, for example, the incidence of sickle cell anemia is high, because it involves a gene that protects against malaria. Beall and her team made a study of 417 women between the ages of 46 and 86 years who have lived all their lives in Nepal above altitudes of around 3,500 meters (11,480 feet). The researchers recorded the number of live births, ranging between 0 and 14 per woman for an average of 5.2, as well as health and physical information and measurements. Among the things they measured were levels of hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells responsible for delivering oxygen to tissues. They also measured how much oxygen was being carried by the hemoglobin. Interestingly, the women who demonstrated the highest rate of live births had hemoglobin levels that were neither high nor low, but average for the testing group. But the oxygen saturation of the hemoglobin was high. Together, the results suggest that the adaptations are able to maximize oxygen delivery to cells and tissues without thickening the blood – a result that would place more stress on the heart as it struggles to pump a higher viscosity fluid more resistant to flow. "Previously we knew that lower hemoglobin was beneficial, now we understand that an intermediate value has the highest benefit. We knew that higher oxygen saturation of hemoglobin was beneficial, now we understand that the higher the saturation the more beneficial. The number of live births quantifies the benefits," Beall said. "It was unexpected to find that women can have many live births with low values of some oxygen transport traits if they have favorable values of other oxygen transport traits." The women with the highest reproductive success rate also had a high rate of blood flow into the lungs, and their hearts had wider than average left ventricles, the chamber of the heart responsible for pumping oxygenated blood into the body. Taken all together, these traits increase the rate of oxygen transport and delivery, enabling the human body to make the most of the low oxygen in the air respired. It's important to note that cultural factors can play a role, too. Women who start reproducing young and have long marriages seem to have a longer exposure to the possibility of pregnancy, which also increases the number of live births, the researchers found. Even taking that into account, however, the physical traits played a role. Nepalese women with physiologies most similar to women in unstressed, low altitude environments tended to have the highest rate of reproductive success. "This is a case of ongoing natural selection," Beall said. "Understanding how populations like these adapt gives us a better grasp of the processes of human evolution." The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. An earlier version of this article was published in October 2024. Nanoplastics Stick to Toxic Bacteria, Forming a Deadly Combination Expert Explains FDA's New COVID Vaccine Rules in The US Your Perfume Could Be Messing With Your Chemical Force Shield
The National
20-05-2025
- Business
- The National
Abu Dhabi aerospace firm to begin manufacture of prototype platforms to launch near-space flights
Abu Dhabi's Space 42 will begin to manufacture prototypes of platforms that will operate thousands of metres above the Earth's surface later this year. The announcement was made on Tuesday by the firm's managing director Karim Sabbagh, who was speaking at the Make it in the Emirates 2025 manufacturing conference in Abu Dhabi, reported the state news agency Wam. Space 42's Abu Dhabi facility will host the manufacturing of the prototype platforms that are designed to capture real-time data and provide high-speed communications from the lower part of the stratosphere. Called a High-Altitude Platform Station (Haps), this technology can reach altitudes of 18km, in a zone known as near-space where no commercial aircraft or satellites operate, The National previously reported. The Haps will enable unmanned aircraft to carry payloads for both communications and Earth observation. Trials in African, Asian, and European markets are expected to begin in the coming months, Mr Sabbagh said. The trials aim to validate the operational capabilities and demonstrate the feasibility of the Haps concept. The platforms themselves will be operated by Mira Aerospace, a subsidiary of space-tech company Space42. Mr Sabbagh also laid out Space42's plans to develop a non-terrestrial communications network, which will "leverage a constellation of satellites to deliver global coverage, particularly in regions underserved by traditional terrestrial infrastructure".
