The New York Times reported on what scientists are discovering about toxins in wildfire smoke, as exposure to unhealthy air is rising in a world experiencing far more fires due to climate change. Dr. Kari Nadeau, dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, said standard measurements of toxic particles may be understating the risk, given that they don’t account for other substances that wildfire smoke can contain, including lead, mercury and formaldehyde. Nadeau, who is studying the consequences of the 2025 Los Angeles fires, has found that fires in populated areas may be especially toxic because they consume things like buildings, vehicles and electronics. Read more about UCLA in today’s People, CNN and others.

See our UCLA in the News daily archive. 

More highlights from UCLA in the News: August 17, 2026

The wait time between diagnosis and treatment for cancer patients has steadily increased, according to a new study published in JAMA Surgery. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, analyzed data from the National Cancer Database from January 2012 to December 2023. They looked only at patients with stage one to three cancers who were considered eligible for surgery at diagnosis across six different cancer types. Comparisons were made between the time of diagnosis and any type of first treatment. (UCLA’s Dr. Tim Donahue was quoted.)

Brian Justie is a researcher at the UCLA Labor Center and author of the report. He says this low-wage workforce is a majority immigrants, and 20 percent are on food stamps (approx. 1:50 mark).

“Maybe any other timeframe, yes. Given that this is a critical election period, both in the United States and Israel coming up, with Netanyahu’s reputation on the line and his legacy as he tries to stay in power, it becomes challenging,” said UCLA’s Benjamin Radd.

“It’s not clear that any of these reforms helped elect more moderates or limit polarization,” said Rick Hasen, a professor of law and political science at UCLA. “Reformers may have over-promised in the early 2010s what election reform could actually do to improve the lives of Californians. And Californians did not fully appreciate the unintended consequences of reforms enacted with even the best of intentions.”

“The U.S. used to be sort of the default, the no-brainer option,” Terence Tao, an Australian-born Fields medalist who is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said in a video. Last year, the Trump administration’s suspension of federal funding to U.C.L.A. affected both his personal grant and an institute he helps lead. The funding was reinstated after a successful lawsuit. But he has warned that abrupt funding disruptions can derail multiyear projects and damage researchers’ trust in the system.

“Well, you have an outbreak that’s occurring on top of already a series of emergencies in a place like the [Democratic Republic of the Congo]. You have conflict, you have poor health care infrastructure, you have poor infrastructure in general, and so it’s not surprising to see that this outbreak is continuing to spiral out of control, given all of the things that are happening at the same time,” said UCLA’s Anne Rimoin.

“In many cases, the public-facing rules that users see are vague enough to be open to the discretion of the platform to make those kinds of shifts and changes at any time,” said Sarah T. Roberts, faculty director and cofounder of the UCLA Center for Critical Internet Inquiry.

In March 2025, researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, estimated the fires’ economic impact at a wage loss of $297 million for local businesses and employees.