Center for Environment & Health

Investigating the health impacts of climate change to understand the underlying mechanisms and develop remediation methods

About

Air pollution, a major environmental risk factor, has substantial toxicological implications for human health, leading to a significant global disease burden. A recent study underlines this concern, indicating that outdoor air pollution, including from the combustion of fossil fuels, contributed to 8.7 million premature deaths worldwide in 2018. This staggering figure equates to one in every five fatalities that occurred that year. By region, the largest burden of disease related to air pollution is found in Western Pacific and Southeast Asia, due to heavy industry and air pollution hotspots in the developing nations of those regions. Developed countries also suffer from mortality and morbidity due to air pollution.

Climate forecasts predict the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East (EMME) region will face amplified warming, drying, and frequent extreme heat events, leading to increasing health risks. High regional air pollution and lower precipitation will stress the area further. Intense urbanization in EMME could exacerbate air and water pollution, with altered land use and dwindling water resources intensifying soil degradation and dust emissions. Research from the Weizmann Institute highlights that dust can transport pollutants, pathogens, and various microorganisms, contributing to air quality deterioration. Moreover, the region's hot and dry conditions could boost wildfires, working in synergy with urban air pollution and dust to exacerbate respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

At the Center for Environment and Health, researchers are working on a wide range of studies focused on the health effects induced by climate change, high levels of air pollution and mineral dust, and poor water quality. This includes studies on the effects of water pollution, the exposure of lung cells and animal models to particles, and the transport of bacteria, fungi and viruses by dust to better understand the spread of pathogens that affect human, ecosystems, and agricultural crops.

Head of Center

Prof. Yinon Rudich

Faculty of Chemistry
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences
Lab Website
Head of Center Image

Prof. Yinon Rudich is a Professor and Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry at the Weizmann Institute of Science. His research focuses on studying aerosol chemistry and physics, and the effects of aerosols on climate and human health. He has established a state-of-the-art aerosol Physics and Biology lab to study the optical properties, ice nucleation, and health effects of aerosols, and he has also created a national pollutants database to study the health effects of exposure to pollutants.

The overarching goal of Dr. Rudich’s research is to provide a mechanistic understanding of the connections between the physical and chemical properties of aerosols to their ability to nucleate ice, absorb and scatter solar radiation, and induce health effects. Dr. Rudich also studies the aerobiome – bacteria, viruses and fungi that are transported in the atmosphere by dust and winds, and their potential impacts on ecosystems and human health.

Dr. Rudich has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed articles and serves as an expert reviewer for the European Commission and ERC. He is a member of the WMO Global Atmosphere Watch Programme’s ARCH (Air Pollution, Climate Change, Health Effects Nexus) working group, is on the scientific advisory board of SPARTAN, and is a member of the international steering committee of the Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR II). He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Society (AGU), the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), and Academia Europea.

Head of Center Image

Research Highlights

Catalytic methods for water remediation 

The Brian Berkowitz lab is developing new catalytic methods and synthesizing new materials to transform persistent organic contaminants and heavy metals into less toxic compounds, involving both reduction and oxidation processes. It is also using laboratory experiments to investigate the feasibility and efficiency of emplacing various materials in permeable reactive barriers, and other configurations, for in situ remediation of contaminated groundwater.

How does particulate matter affect our health?

Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) is an important source of air pollution and a major environmental health problem. Exposure to air pollution can cause immediate symptoms even for healthy people. Long-term exposure is estimated to be the third leading contributor to chronic respiratory and cardiovascular disorders, as well as lung cancer and premature deaths. The Yinon Rudich lab is conducting research with the aim to reach an in-depth mechanistic understanding of how PM formation pathways and its chemical composition affect human health through controlled laboratory exposure experiments.

Finding remediators of human-made artifacts

Microbes constantly evolve in response to changes in their environment. The David Zeevi lab is seeking to discover how environmental microbes change in response to anthropogenic materials. It uses metagenomic and metabolomic assays, combined with AI, to find new genes that microbes use to evade and metabolize pollutants, validating findings in the lab using high-throughput screening and automation.

Groups

IES Fellows