“I thought I was surely going to die … panic set in.” These are the words of Dennie Edwards, written in 2008, shortly before he passed away after a four-year battle with radon-linked lung cancer. Edwards is one of the more than 21,000 Americans who die every year from the disease — caused by an invisible, odorless killer. BarbSorgatz, 60, was far luckier. Her lung cancer was caught extremely early. Still, as a never-smoker, the news floored her. (MORE:Do You...

(Thinkstock/Stockbyte) Warming seas from climate change could spread ciguatera fish poisoning,a potentially sexually transmitted form of food poisoning, according to NPR. The report looks at a 25-year-old study that suggested ciguatera could have been sexually transmitted from a husband to his wife in two separate cases. The poison could have been passed along to the wives through semen, according to the study from the journal Clinical Toxicology. That study appears even more relevant today, because cases of ciguatera have been...

How far north you live may help determine how much you weigh, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Arizona. (ABOVE: The World's Fattest Countries) How? People who live in northern latitudes have different gut bacteria than those living farther south — in just the latest analysis to demonstrate the power gut microbes hold over human health. Previously, microbes have been found to affect mental health, immune function, metabolism and more. As for the...

With a well-being score of 70.4, North Dakota snagged the title of the nation’s best well-being state, according to the 2013 Gallup-Healthways Well-Being survey. Click through to countdown from the happiest state to the saddest — and to find out where your state ranks. (Ron Chapple/Thinkstock) For the first time ever, North Dakota, a state known for wide open spaces and a cooler climate, is at the top of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, knocking Hawaii out of the top two...

((Getty Images/Spencer Platt)) As the globe warms, the number of cold weather deaths might not decrease, despite warmer winters, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. (MORE: Climate Change Predicted to Spike Hot Weather Deaths 257 Percent) Researchers from the University of Exeter and University College London analyzed cold weather deaths from 1951 to 2011. Over the first 20 years, the analysis showed that cold days were strongly linked to death rates, perhaps suggesting that warmer...

A mysterious polio-like syndrome hit a cluster of California children, beginning in August 2012, rendering them paralyzed — just two days after the disease’s onset, in most cases. Sixmonths after the illness, the five children who were sickened still had poor limb function, doctors from Stanford University and the University of California, San Francisco, said in a case report, which will be presented at the American Academy of Neurology’s 66th Annual Meeting in Philadelphia later this spring. Case report author...

While much of the country braces for another Arctic chill, a summertime problem has emerged early for those in California and Maryland. A foodborne illness, listeriosis, has infected eight people, killed one and caused the Delaware company, Roos Foods, to recall 16 varieties of cheese linked to the outbreak, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. As of Monday afternoon, the outbreak had infected seven people in Maryland and one...

By 2210, the global population is expected to grow from just more than 7 billion to 11.3 billion — with 87 percent of the population living in urban areas, according to a new working paper by researchers from NYU’s Marron Institute. Most of these individuals will be in what’s now the developing world — creating a host of environmental and health problems. If projections are correct, these new urban dwellers will require the world’s existing cities to expand six-fold to...

The death of a 10-year-old San Diego boy from a bacterial infection he reportedly got from his pet rat prompted his family to sue retailerPetco, saying they want to raise awareness among parents. Attorney John Gomez told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his firm filed the lawsuit Monday in San Diego County seeking an unspecified amount for the suffering endured by the Pankey family, whose son, Aidan, died June 12, 2013, hours after he was rushed to the hospital...

The Midwest — though not the geographical region with the highest obesity rates — experienced the largest increase in obesity rate from 2012 to 2013, a trend that occurred across all regions of the country and contributed to an increase in adult obesity rate that grew to 27.1 percent, according to tracking from Gallup and Healthways. (ABOVE: Do You Live in America’s Fattest State?) The country saw the obesity rate rise nearly a full percentage point from 26.2 percent in...

In a first, a man in a smog-filled city in China is suing the government for failing to rein in air pollution. Li Guixin, a resident of the northern city of Shijiazhuang, submitted a formal complaint in the district court and is also seeking compensation for residents of the city, arguing that the municipal environmental protection bureau had a duty to control air pollution. Li bought air masks and a treadmill to cope with the choking miasma that beset his...

Melanoma. Sarcoma. Hepatic cancer. These are all rare types of cancer that develop from environmental causes (the sun, in the case of melanoma), genetics, infections and other causes — sometimes, just bad luck. Individually, these and other rare cancers affect fewer than 200,000 people nationwide. Together, though, rare cancers make up more than 50 percent of cancer cases, a statistic David Linn was shocked to learn when his wife, Jennifer, was diagnosed with sarcoma in 2004. “The doctor said to...