It’s no surprise that roads through rainforests are bad news for the trees; deforestation often follows infrastructure. They could also be bad for people, though. A study from the thinning jungle of northern Ecuador suggests that where roads go, disease follows, in a way that echoes the spread of disease in the New World brought by 15th-century European colonisers.
Joseph Eisenberg of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and colleagues visited 21 villages situated at varying distances from a newly built asphalt highway. Their aim was to test the effect roads had on spreading severe and sometimes deadly diarrhoea.
Villagers…
