It may be one of those New York Times best-sellers on sale at the airport but Susan Clark is not fooled; Barbara Kingsolver's Flight Behaviour is a novel that sets out to tackle the biggest single issue we are facing.

Health officials say vaccination rates against measles are worryingly low among Somali children in the U.S. and U.K. because some parents still believe the MMR jab is linked to autism. BBC Radio 4's The Report has found that the discredited former doctor Andrew Wakefield visited some Somali groups in the U.S.

One of the most contentious issues roiling India these days is whether the country should permit commercial planting of genetically modified (GM) food crops.

Nearly 260,000 people died during the famine that hit Somalia from 2010 to 2012, a study shows. Half of them were children under the age of five, says the report by the UN and the US-funded Famine Early Warning Systems Network (Fews Net).

Lead is valuable in the Peruvian Amazon since it is easily molded to make perfect weights for fishing lines and nets. That convenience comes at a cost. Three out of every four children in communities in the Corrientes River basin have blood lead levels higher than those considered excessive under U.S. health guidelines.

The state of California is suing Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, Target and other retailers and candy makers, claiming the companies have exposed consumers to illegal lead levels in their candied plum and ginger products.

The quest for lusher, ruby-red lips may be exposing women to dangerous metals, including cadmium, a highly toxic element linked with renal failure, a UC Berkeley study suggests.

The Food and Drug Administration is considering placing limits on food makers' ability to add caffeine to products as manufacturers infuse a growing number of items with the stimulant.

It has been a kidney stone of a rainfall season in Fresno, but it has almost passed.

Babies whose mothers have low levels of iodine during pregnancy have worse literacy skills in childhood. “Our research found children may continue to experience the effects of insufficient iodine for years after birth,” said public health specialist Kristen Hynes, who led the study.

Allergy season can be brutal depending on where in the United States you live, because of pollution, pollen counts and other factors. A new study suggests simply being born in America may be another reason to blame for allergies.

Wrigley's new Alert Energy Caffeine Gum has prompted the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to look into the potential impact that added caffeine may have on children and adolescents.

More than one in seven five-year-olds in Scotland is clinically overweight or obese and could benefit from help with their diet and exercise, latest figures show.

Environmentalists are spoofing AT&T's "It's not complicated" campaign in a new series of big-dollar messages thanking Democratic senators for their votes against budget amendments that they believed would have weakened the Clean Air Act.

Do you know how old your kids' arteries are? It's a potentially important question as scientists increasingly uncover links between healthy habits in childhood and risk for heart disease later in life.

A Minnesota company has pledged to remove flame-retardant chemicals from the children's nap mats it sells in California as part of a lawsuit settlement announced Monday by the Center for Environmental Health in Oakland.

It is imperative that we draw up a list of priority chemicals that impact children's health. This in turn may lead to more rapid phaseout of toxic chemicals from child-related products. And to replace toxics, we should place greater emphasis on introducing safer alternatives.

In the third year since the onset of the Fukushima nuclear disaster – an event we were told would change our values and the way we live – there are still evacuees who cannot return home. Is concern over nuclear accidents already fading away? Or are people consciously trying to forget?

Kids and teens who are born abroad and immigrate to the U.S. are about half as likely to have asthma and allergies as those who are born in the U.S., according to a new study. Researchers suspect there are environmental factors in the U.S. that trigger allergies.

Children born outside the United States have a lower risk of asthma, skin and food allergies – and living in the United States for a decade may raise a person's allergy risk, said a study on Monday.