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James Dahlman and Phil Santangelo are helping to define an evolving era in medicine, one in which messenger ribonucleic acid — mRNA — can be delivered directly to cells to fight against disease. And their latest groundbreaking study could clear the way to faster therapeutic discoveries.
Long before the Covid-19 pandemic put a global spotlight on mRNA-based vaccines, these two researchers in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University were combining their distinct skillsets to leverage the clinical potential of mRNA.
“Our work is very compatible,” said Dahlman, associate professor and McCamish Foundation Early Career Professor. “Phil’s lab designs and manufactures really high-quality mRNA, and my lab develops the lipid nanoparticles to deliver it.”
Therapeutics made from mRNA or DNA hold promise in addressing lots of diseases, explained Santangelo, a professor in Coulter BME, “but they’re not much good if they can’t get where they need to go. If you make cargo, which is essentially what we do in my lab, you need delivery, so James and I have a very natural collaboration.”
Their partnership, which began when Dahlman arrived at Georgia Tech in 2016, consistently yields results published in high-impact journals and garners generous research grants from federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
That includes a recent flood of cutting-edge papers: two in Nature Biomedical Engineering (from October 2021, and a forthcoming study) as well as their latest publication, released Feb. 7 in Nature Nanotechnology.
“We’re reporting an improved barcoding system that would make animal pre-clinical nanoparticle studies more predictive, speeding up the development of RNA therapies,” Dahlman said.

Men with high levels of body fat have lower bone density and may be more likely to break a bone than those with normal levels of body fat, according to a new study published in the Endocrine Society’s Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism.
Most studies have shown positive or neutral effects of body fat mass — the weight of fat in your body — on bone health. Lean mass is the entire weight of your body, including organs, skin and bones, minus fat. Health care providers often assume people with higher body weight have high bone density and are at low risk of fracture, and these patients are less likely to be screened for osteoporosis.
“We found that higher fat mass was related to lower bone density, and these trends were stronger in men than women,” said Rajesh K. Jain, M.D., of University of Chicago Medicine in Chicago, Ill. “Our research suggests that the effect of body weight depends on a person’s makeup of lean and fat mass, and that high body weight alone is not a guarantee against osteoporosis.”
The researchers analyzed the bone mineral density and body composition data of 10,814 people under 60 years old from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) 2011-2018. They found a strong positive association between lean mass and bone mineral density in both men and women. Conversely, fat mass had a moderately negative association with bone mineral density, especially in men.
“Health care providers should consider osteoporosis screening for patients with high body weight, especially if they have other risk factors like older age, previous fracture, family history, or steroid use,” Jain said.
Tamara Vokes of University of Chicago Medicine is the co-author of the study.
The study received no external funding.
The manuscript, “Fat Mass Has Negative Effects on Bone, Especially in Men: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of NHANES 2011-2018,” was published online, ahead of print.
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The Black Death, which plagued Europe, West Asia and North Africa from 1347-1352, is the most infamous pandemic in history. Historians have estimated that up to 50% of Europe’s population died during the pandemic and credit the Black Death with transforming religious and political structures, even precipitating major cultural and economic transformations such as the Renaissance. Although ancient DNA research has identified Yersinia pestis as the Black Death’s causative agent and even traced its evolution across millennia, data on the plague’s demographic impacts is still underexplored and little understood.
Now, a new study in Nature Ecology and Evolution demonstrates that the Black Death’s mortality in Europe was not as universal or as widespread as long thought. An international team of researchers, led by the Palaeo-Science and History group at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History, analyzed pollen samples from 261 sites in 19 modern-day European countries to determine how landscapes and agricultural activity changed between 1250 and 1450 CE — roughly 100 years before to 100 years after the pandemic. Their analysis supports the devastation experienced by some European regions, but also shows that the Black Death did not impact all regions equally.
Landscapes tell a surprising story
Palynology, or the study of fossil plant spores and pollen, is a powerful tool for uncovering the demographic impacts of the Black Death. This is because human pressures on the landscape in pre-industrial times, such as farming or clearing native plants for building, were heavily dependent on the availability of rural workers. Using a new approach called Big-data paleoecology (BDP), the researchers analyzed 1,634 pollen samples from sites all over Europe to see which plants were growing in which quantities, and thereby determine whether agricultural activities in each region continued or halted, or if wild plants regrew while human pressure is reduced.
Their results show that the Black Death’s mortality varied widely, with some areas suffering the devastation the pandemic has become known for and others experiencing a much lighter touch. Sharp agricultural declines in Scandinavia, France, southwestern Germany, Greece and central Italy support the high mortality rates attested to in medieval sources. Meanwhile many regions, including much of Central and Eastern Europe and parts of Western Europe including Ireland and Iberia, show evidence for continuity or uninterrupted growth.
“The significant variability in mortality that our BDP approach identifies remains to be explained, but local cultural, demographic, economic, environmental and societal contexts would have influenced Y. pestis prevalence, morbidity and mortality,” says Alessia Masi from the MPI SHH and La Sapienza University in Rome.
No single model of the pandemic
One reason these results come as a surprise is that many of the quantitative sources that have been used to construct Black Death case studies come from urban areas, which, despite their ability to collect information and keep records, were also characterized by crowding and poor sanitation. However, in the mid 14th century, upwards of 75% of the population of every European region was rural. The current study shows that, to understand the mortality of a particular region, data must be reconstructed from local sources, including BDP as a method for measuring the change in cultural landscapes.
“There is no single model of ‘the pandemic’ or a ‘plague outbreak’ that can be applied to any place at any time regardless of the context,” says Adam Izdebski, the leader of the Palaeo-Science and History group at the MPI SHH. “Pandemics are complex phenomena that have regional, local histories. We have seen this with COVID-19, now we have now shown it for the Black Death.”
The differences in the Black Death’s mortality across Europe demonstrates that the plague was a dynamic disease, with cultural, ecological, economic and climatic factors mediating its dissemination and impact. Moving forward, the researchers hope that more studies will use palaeoecological data to understand how these variables interact to shape past — and present — pandemics.

New research led by bioengineers at the University of California San Diego could make it much simpler to repair disease-causing mutations in RNA without compromising precision or efficiency.
The new RNA editing technology holds promise as a gene therapy for treating genetic diseases. In a proof of concept, UC San Diego researchers showed that the technology can treat a mouse model of Hurler syndrome, a rare genetic disease, by correcting its disease-causing mutation in RNA. The findings are published Feb. 10 in Nature Biotechnology.
What’s special about the technology is that it makes efficient use of RNA editing enzymes that naturally occur in the body’s cells. These enzymes are called adenosine deaminases acting on RNA (ADARs). They bind to RNA and convert some of the adenosine (A) bases to inosine (I), which is read by the cell’s translation machinery as guanosine (G).
Researchers have been exploring RNA editing approaches with ADARs to correct the G-to-A mutation behind genetic disorders such as cystic fibrosis, Rett syndrome and Hurler syndrome. A big advantage of RNA editing — over DNA editing, for example — is that changes to RNA are only temporary, since RNA has a short lifespan. So even if off-target edits occur, they wouldn’t be there to stay.
To make a targeted A-to-I (or essentially, an A-to-G) edit on RNA using ADARs, a short accessory strand of RNA — called a guide RNA — is needed to guide ADARs to the target and make the desired change there.
A big challenge with this approach is that traditional guide RNAs are not efficient at using native ADARs in the cell, so they require external ADARs to be brought into the cell to work, explained Prashant Mali, a bioengineering professor at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. “But the problem with that,” he added, “is that it makes delivery complicated. And it can result in more off targets.”
To overcome these issues, Mali and colleagues engineered a new kind of guide RNA — one that is extremely effective at recruiting the cell’s own ADARs to make edits at a precise target RNA region.

Many sufferers of rare diseases endure an odyssey until the correct diagnosis is made. “The goal is to detect such diseases at an early stage and initiate appropriate therapy as soon as possible,” says Prof. Dr. Peter Krawitz from the Institute for Genomic Statistics and Bioinformatics (IGSB) at the University Hospital Bonn (Germany). The researcher is a member of the Cluster of Excellence ImmunoSensation2 and the Transdisciplinary Research Area “Modelling” at the University of Bonn.
The majority of rare diseases are genetic. The underlying hereditary mutations often cause varying degrees of impairment in different areas of the body. In most cases, these hereditary changes are also expressed by characteristic facial features: for example, because eyebrows, the base of the nose or the cheeks are shaped in a distinctive way. However, this varies from disease to disease. Artificial intelligence (AI) uses these facial characteristics, calculates the similarities, and automatically links them to clinical symptoms and genetic data of patients. “The face provides us with a starting point for diagnosis,” says Tzung-Chien Hsieh of Krawitz’s team. “It is possible to calculate what the disease is with a high degree of accuracy.”
“GestaltMatcher” requires only a few patients
The AI system “GestaltMatcher” described in the current publication is a continued development of “DeepGestalt,” which the IGSB team trained with other institutions a few years ago. While DeepGestalt still required about ten non-related affected persons as a reference for training, its successor “GestaltMatcher” requires significantly fewer patients for feature matching. This is a great advantage in the group of very rare diseases, where only a few patients are reported worldwide. Furthermore, the new AI system also considers similarities with patients who have also not yet been diagnosed, and thus combinations of characteristics that have not yet been described. GestaltMatcher therefore also “recognizes” diseases that were previously unknown to it and suggests diagnoses based on this. “This means we can now classify previously unknown diseases, search for other cases and provide clues as to the molecular basis,” says Krawitz.
The team used 17,560 patient photos, most of which came from digital health company FDNA, which the research team worked with developing the web service through which the AI can be used. Around 5,000 of the photos and patient data were contributed by the research team at the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of Bonn, along with nine other university sites in Germany and abroad. The researchers focused on disease patterns that were as diverse as possible. They were able to consider a total of 1,115 different rare diseases. “This wide variation in appearance trained the AI so well that we can now diagnose with relative confidence even with only two patients as our baseline at best, if that’s possible,” Krawitz says.
“We are very happy to finally have a phenotype analysis solution for the ultra-rare cases, which can help clinicians solve challenging cases, and researchers to progress rare disease understanding,” says Aviram Bar-Haim of FDNA Inc. in Boston, USA. In Germany, too, the application in doctors’ offices, for example, is not far off, adds Krawitz. Doctors can already use their smartphones to take a portrait photo of a patient and use AI to make differential diagnoses, he says. “GestaltMatcher helps the physician make an assessment and complements expert opinion.”
Peter Krawitz and his team turned over the data they collected themselves to the non-profit Association for Genome Diagnostics (AGD), to provide researchers with access. “The GestaltMatcher Database (GMDB) will improve the comparability of algorithms and provide the basis for further development of artificial intelligence for rare diseases, including other medical image data such as X-rays or retinal images from ophthalmology,” Krawitz says.
Participating institutions and funding:
In addition to the Institute for Genomic Statistics and Bioinformatics and the Institute of Human Genetics of the University Hospital Bonn, the Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, the universities of Greifswald, Tübingen, Düsseldorf, Lübeck, Heidelberg, the Technical University of Munich as well as universities from South Africa, France, the USA and Norway were involved. The study was mainly funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG).
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A simple eye test may make diagnosing the earliest stages of ‘diseases of old age’ possible when people are much younger, University of Otago researchers hope.
Parts of our retina have previously been proposed as biomarkers for Alzheimer’s, but researchers from Otago’s Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Research Unit have been investigating the retina’s potential to indicate cognitive change earlier in life.
Study lead Dr Ashleigh Barrett-Young says diseases of old age, such as Alzheimer’s, are usually diagnosed when people start forgetting things or acting out of character.
“This is often when the disease is quite far along. Early detection is possible through MRI or other brain imaging, but this is expensive and impractical for most.
“In the near future, it’s hoped that artificial intelligence will be able to take an image of a person’s retina and determine whether that person is at risk for Alzheimer’s long before they begin showing symptoms, and when there is a possibility of treatment to mitigate the symptoms,” she says.
The study, published in JAMA Ophthalmology, analysed data from 865 Dunedin Study participants looking specifically at the retinal nerve fibre layer (RNFL) and ganglion cell layer (GCL) at age 45.
Dr Barrett-Young says they found thicker RNFL and GCL in middle age was associated with better cognitive performance in childhood and adulthood. Thinner RNFL was also linked to a greater decline in processing speed (the speed in which a person can understand and react to the information they receive) from childhood to adulthood.
“These findings suggest that RNFL could be an indicator of overall brain health. This highlights the potential for optical scans to aid in the diagnosis of cognitive decline.
“Given we haven’t been able to treat advanced Alzheimer’s, and that the global prevalence of the disease is increasing, being able to identify people in the preclinical stage, when we may still have the chance to intervene, is really important,” she says.
Further studies are required to determine if retinal thinning predicts Alzheimer’s, or just the normal cognitive decline of old age, but the researchers have hope.
“In the future, these findings could result in AI being used to take a typical optical coherence tomography scan, done at an optometrist, and combine it with other health data to determine your likely risk for developing Alzheimer’s.”
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With the end of many statewide mask mandates, it’s up to local districts whether they will keep the requirement. Communities anticipate political and emotional fights ahead.David Fleishman, the superintendent of schools in Newton, Mass., an affluent Boston suburb, said he recently received a message from a parent who pushed for ending mask mandates in classrooms.But first, he said, the individual felt the need to assure him, “I am not a Trump supporter.”While Newton, like much of Massachusetts, is mostly liberal and Democratic, Mr. Fleishman said that when it comes to masks, “there’s this tension.”The battle over mask mandates may be moving to liberal-leaning communities that had been largely in agreement on the need for masking — and bound by statewide mask requirements.Now that Massachusetts will lift its school mask mandate on Feb. 28, joining other liberal states like New Jersey and Connecticut, it will be up to individual school districts like Newton, and nearby Boston, to decide whether and how quickly they want to rescind their own mask rules.They will do so under a barrage of conflicting public health guidance, with Ivy League, government and medical experts offering competing advice.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics continue to call for school masking, and some polls show that the public is broadly supportive of the practice.Districts must decide whether to end mask mandates at schools like Countryside Elementary School, where Ms. Szwarcewicz teaches.Tony Luong for The New York TimesBut a well-organized chorus of public health and child development experts, alongside parent activists, say that masking can hurt children academically and socially, and are calling for the return to a semblance of normalcy.Newton and Boston, about 10 miles apart, give an idea of how two politically liberal and cautious districts are approaching the choice — and how and why they may come to different decisions. The debate will involve science, but also politics, race and class, as well as a swell of emotions.Some see masking as a potent health tool and a symbol of progressive values. Others have come to see face coverings as an unfortunate social barrier between their children and the world. And many people are somewhere in between.In Newton, 65 percent of elementary school students, 79 percent of middle schoolers and 88 percent of high schoolers are vaccinated, according to the district. The district is 61 percent white, and 14 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.Some prominent leaders in the community say they are ready to relax restrictions.In Boston, where vaccination rates are somewhat lower — significantly so for Black and Latino children, who make up most of the district — the public school district says it has no plan to end its mask mandate.Teachers’ unions have been among the strongest supporters of masking, pushing in recent weeks for their members and students to have access to medical-grade masks.Tony Luong for The New York TimesNeither do some of the city’s charter schools.David Steefel-Moore, director of operations for the MATCH charter school network, said he had heard “no negative blowback” on masking from parents, who are overwhelmingly Black and Latino. “We have the other side of that: ‘My child told me there is a kid in their class with the mask down around their neck. What are you doing about that?’”For students in Boston who may be living with a grandparent or family member with underlying health issues, the end of mandatory masking could put children and teenagers in the uncomfortable position of having to choose between their family’s sense of safety and fitting in at school, said Gayl Crump Swaby, a Boston Public Schools parent and professor of counseling who specializes in issues of trauma for families of color.“They should not have to be making these kinds of decisions; they are young,” she said.Some parents might even prefer online schooling to classrooms with unmasked peers and teachers, she added.In Newton, one of the most prominent voices in the masking debate is Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, and a parent of students in the district. He serves on the district’s medical advisory group, and has become an outspoken advocate for unmasking children as Omicron recedes.The group will meet this month to formulate a recommendation on masking for the elected school committee, which will make the final decision.Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, is a Newton parent and supports ending the district’s school mask mandate: “If not now, when?”Elise Amendola/Associated PressDr. Jha does not believe that his own children have been seriously harmed from masking, and does not believe that the pandemic is over.But he wants to unmask soon, he says, in part to offer some social and academic normalcy, given that he thinks future coronavirus surges in the United States are likely to require masking again — potentially in the South over the summer and in the North this fall and next winter.He argued that with new therapeutics to treat Covid-19, there is little upside this spring to masking in regions, like the Boston area, with relatively high vaccination rates and plummeting infections.“If not now, when?” he asked. “Because I don’t foresee a time in the next couple of years that will necessarily be that much better.”Vulnerable teachers and students, he said, could stay safe by wearing high-quality masks even when those around them are not covered. Throughout the pandemic, he pointed out, virus transmission inside schools has been limited, including in some places where masks have not been required.Dr. Jha’s advice, however, is not necessarily reassuring to educators who have seen guidelines change frequently over the past two years.The Coronavirus Pandemic: Key Things to KnowCard 1 of 3Some mask mandates ending.

Studies have shown that Aboriginal Australians living in remote areas of the country are disproportionately affected by dementia, with rates approximately double those of non-Indigenous people. A new study shows that Aboriginal Australians living in urban areas also have similar high rates of dementia. The study is published in the February 9, 2022, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. The study looked at Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
“Given that the majority of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples now live in urban areas, these results are critically important,” said study author Louise M. Lavrencic, PhD, of Neuroscience Research Australia in Sydney. “Aboriginal Australians have among the highest rates of dementia in the world, so we looked at some of the potential risk factors that may be facing this population.”
The study involved 155 Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islander people with an average age of 66 who were followed for an average of six years. During that time, 16 people developed dementia and another 20 people developed mild cognitive impairment, which includes problems with thinking skills and memory that can be a precursor to dementia.
Once researchers adjusted for age, the rate of dementia was 36 cases per 1,000 person-years. Person-years take into account the number of people in a study as well as the amount of time spent in the study.
Researchers looked at which factors were associated with an increased risk of dementia. Men, people who worked in jobs that require no special training and people who took five or more medications were more likely to develop dementia.
The researchers also found a higher rate of the APOE gene variant associated with Alzheimer’s disease, APOE ?4, among participants. The rate among participants was 24% compared to average global estimates of 14% among white populations.
“While the study was not designed to examine these factors, the ongoing effects of colonization, systemic racism, and the resulting social and health disparities across Aboriginal Australian communities likely contribute to these higher rates of dementia,” Lavrencic said. “Larger studies are needed to look at these effects and identify culturally appropriate and effective dementia risk reduction strategies.”
Limitations of the study include the small number of participants and that a number of participants initially assessed did not complete the full study.
The study was supported by the Australian Dementia Centre for Research Collaboration.
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Babies and children sitting in bicycle trailers breathe in more polluted air than the adults riding the bikes that pull them — but trailer covers can help halve air pollution levels, according to research from the University of Surrey.
In research published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances, Surrey’s Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE) found that on journeys typical of school or nursery runs, the average concentration of coarse air pollution particles in a bike trailer is 14% higher than at cyclist height and 18% higher than cyclist height in the afternoons when parents or carers typically collect children.
The researchers found that young children were exposed to even higher concentrations of air pollution during peak morning periods at urban pollution hotspots, such as traffic lights.
Air pollution is a leading cause of death in children under the age of five.
Professor Prashant Kumar, Founding Director of GCARE at the University of Surrey, said:
“It’s unfortunate that the very people who help minimise pollution by cycling rather than driving can be exposing their children to higher levels of pollution, and I’d encourage adults pulling bike trailers to use covers in heavy traffic. With the use of electric-assisted cargo bikes growing rapidly in Europe, it’s crucial traffic planners ensure road infrastructure is designed to enable safe use of sustainable transport options.”
In their peer-reviewed study, the GCARE researchers detailed how they simulated the exposure profiles of an adult cyclist and young children sitting in a bike trailer attached to it for multiple air pollutants during the school runs in the morning and afternoon hours. Taking measurements on over 80 runs covering 176km, the researchers assessed the differences in exposure concentrations on the bike compared within the trailer.
The researchers compared pollution in bike trailers with and without covers, finding that concerned parents and carers can reduce their children’s exposure to pollutants by using a trailer cover. Covers halved the levels of fine particles in trailers during peak morning hours.
The study also discussed the impact of lockdown restrictions. When schools were closed and vehicle journeys limited to essential travel at the start of last year, bike trailer concentrations of fine pollution particles were reduced by up to 91% compared with the eased lockdown period when schools re-opened in March 2021.
In future, the researchers hope to secure funding to continue their research so they can build an exposure profile database in a variety of bike trailers under diverse traffic and built environmental conditions.
Indoor and outdoor air pollution is estimated by the World Health Organization to be a leading cause of one in ten deaths in children under the age of five years, a group particularly vulnerable to the negative health impacts of air pollution. In 2016 alone, exposure to outdoor air pollution led to nearly 543,000 premature deaths of children worldwide under the age of five.
This work was supported by the EPSRC MAPE project (Project Reference 1948919) and builds upon previous GCARE research into citizen science as a part of Guildford Living Lab, school guidance and pram exposure and mitigation studies, as well as ESPRC COTRACE project.
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One out of three people in a large survey showed signs of exposure to a pesticide called 2,4-D, according to a study published today by researchers at the George Washington University. This novel research found that human exposure to this chemical has been rising as agricultural use of the chemical has increased, a finding that raises worries about possible health implications.
“Our study suggests human exposures to 2,4-D have gone up significantly and they are predicted to rise even more in the future,” Marlaina Freisthler, a PhD student and researcher at the George Washington University, said. “These findings raise concerns with regard to whether this heavily used weed-killer might cause health problems, especially for young children who are very sensitive to chemical exposures.”
Lead author Freisthler and her colleagues looked for biomarkers of the pesticide found in urine samples from participants in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. They estimated agricultural use of 2,-D by studying public and private pesticide use data from 2001 until 2014.
Out of 14,395 participants in the survey nearly 33 percent had detectable levels of 2,4-D in their urine. The researchers found that participants with urine levels of this pesticide went from a low of 17 percent at the start of the study in 2001-2002 to a high of nearly 40 percent ten years later.
Other key findings of the new study: As the use of the herbicide increased during the study period so did human exposures. Children ages 6-11 had more than double the risk of increasing exposure to 2,4-D. In addition, women of childbearing age had nearly twice the risk of increased exposure compared to men in the same age group. Human exposures are likely to rise even more in the near future as this herbicide’s use continues to go up.2,4-D was developed in the 1940s and soon became a popular weed-killer for farmers who wanted to increase crop yields. In addition, homeowners looking for a pristine, green lawn also turned to 2,4-D often in combination with other lawn chemicals.
Exposure to high levels of this chemical has been linked to cancer, reproductive problems, and other health issues. While scientists don’t know what the impact of exposure to lower levels of the herbicide might be, they do know that 2,4-D is an endocrine disruptor and this study shows children and women of childbearing age are at higher risk of exposure.
Children can be exposed if they play barefoot on a lawn treated with the weed-killer or if they put their hands in their mouths after playing outside, where the soil or grass might be contaminated with the chemical. People also can be exposed by eating soybean-based foods and through inhalation. The now widespread use of 2,4-D on GMO soybeans and cotton leads to more 2,4-D moving in the air, which can expose more people to this chemical, according to the researchers.
“Further study must determine how rising exposure to 2,4-D affects human health-especially when exposure occurs early in life,” Melissa Perry, a professor of environmental and occupational health and senior author of the paper, said. “In addition to exposure to this pesticide, children and other vulnerable groups are also increasingly exposed to other pesticides and these chemicals may act synergistically to produce health problems.”
Consumers who want to avoid exposures to pesticide can purchase organically grown food, which is less likely to be grown with weed killers. They can also avoid using 2,4-D or other pesticides on their lawn or garden, the researchers said.
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