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Air quality samples collected near the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility during the 2015 blowout that led to the largest-known human-caused release of methane in U.S. history showed elevated levels of pollutants known or suspected to be associated with serious health problems, a UCLA Fielding School of Public Health-led study has found.

The study, which appears in the June 26 issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environment International, raises concerns about the potential public health impacts resulting from the methane leak at the Southern California Gas Company facility, which is located less than a mile from the Los Angeles residential community of Porter Ranch in the northwest San Fernando Valley.

Although methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that can contribute to climate change, it does not have a federal-level actionable human health benchmark. But the UCLA study found that the high methane levels in Porter Ranch during the final weeks of the event coincided with — and likely influenced —  a broad range of air pollutants known or suspected to cause certain cancers, as well as neurological and respiratory effects.

The study also found evidence that the final attempts to plug the leak in the well at the Aliso Canyon facility were associated with particle emissions that likely came from the well site, and that the well and/or activities associated with attempts to mitigate the leak had a discernible effect on the indoor air environments of homes that were sampled.

“Our findings demonstrate that uncontrolled leaks or blowout events at natural gas storage facilities can release pollutants with the potential to cause not only environmental harm, but also adverse health consequences in surrounding communities,” said study first author Diane A. Garcia-Gonzales, a postdoctoral scholar at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability. “This suggests the need for a thorough assessment of the health impact this event had on the Porter Ranch and surrounding communities, both for the benefit of that population and to better understand the potential health risks to communities surrounding the hundreds of other natural gas storage facilities throughout the U.S.”

Southern California Gas operators working at the Aliso Canyon facility first reported the leak on October 23, 2015, and by the time state officials announced that it was permanently plugged, nearly four months later, approximately 97,100 metric tons of methane had been released into the atmosphere. An assessment of more than 100 indoor environments, including homes and schools, adjacent to the storage facility found elevated levels of several air toxins along with a “fingerprint” of metals in dust samples similar to those taken of samples at the blowout site. In a post-leak community survey, 63% of households reported that someone in their home had experienced symptoms persisting after the leak was plugged, including headaches, nausea, and gastrointestinal or respiratory problems.

The UCLA-led team sought to delve further into the previously reported findings by identifying which air pollutants known to be associated with health risks were elevated in conjunction with the high levels of methane measured during the leak. The researchers found evidence that a broad range of hazardous air pollutants were co-emitted during the peak methane emissions, with a spike in the final days when the well was being plugged.

The UCLA team recommended that natural gas storage facilities be required to install equipment that collects air quality and meteorological data, and that closer environmental monitoring be required following severe off-normal operation events.

“More than 300 natural gas storage fields within the United States use depleted oil wells, many of them aging, with very little oversight as to how they should be updated,” said Michael Jerrett, the study’s senior author, who is professor and chair of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences. “Given the potential for future events like the one that occurred at Aliso Canyon, it’s essential that we continue to learn about the health risks both during these active blowout events and as residents who evacuate return to their homes.”

The UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, founded in 1961, is dedicated to enhancing the public’s health by conducting innovative research, training future leaders and health professionals from diverse backgrounds, translating research into policy and practice, and serving our local communities and the communities of the nation and the world. The school has 650 students from more than 35 nations engaged in carrying out the vision of building healthy futures in greater Los Angeles, California, the nation and the world.

Contact: 
Carla Denly, Assistant Dean for Communications
 

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Q&A: Health Effects of Climate Change
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Original story at: https://ph.ucla.edu/news/press-release/2019/jun/pollutants-emitted-2015-aliso-canyon-methane-blowout-pose-potentially

With wildfires expected to increase in frequency and intensity in California and elsewhere in the U.S., FSPH faculty address emerging public health concerns. 

 

“During these fires in California, we see pollution levels that are more like Beijing, China, or New Delhi, India.”

— Michael Jerrett

Magazine: 

Magazine Spring/Summer 2019

THE CAMP FIRE that started on November 8, 2018 in Northern California’s Butte County burned through more than 150,000 acres and destroyed more than 18,000 structures over 17 days. Eighty-five lives were lost, making it the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history. The Woolsey Fire, which started the same day, blazed through nearly 100,000 acres in Los Angeles and Ventura counties, destroying more than 1,600 structures and forcing the evacuation of nearly 300,000 people.

The twin wildfire disasters were preceded in July 2018 by the Mendocino Complex Fire, the largest in the state’s history, which covered nearly 460,000 acres across four counties in Northern California. Before that, the largest was the Thomas Fire, which burned more than 280,000 acres in Ventura and Santa Barbara counties, in December 2017.

California’s wildfire season is starting earlier and ending later, and as the run of recent record setters suggests, the fires have increased in severity in recent years. There are reasons to suspect that climate change is an important factor. Most of the state’s hottest and driest years have occurred since 2000, and the longer spells without precipitation give vegetation more time to dry out and become more combustible. “Some areas of California are projecting a 200-300 percent increased risk by 2030 in wildfire events,” notes Michael Jerrett, professor and chair of the Fielding School’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences.

The public health threat from these fires is exacerbated by the considerable amount of real estate development that has occurred in recent years in traditionally fire-prone areas. A 2018 study found a 41 percent increase between 1990 and 2010 in the number of new homes built at the wildland-urban interface — described as where houses and wildland vegetation intermingle, and where wildfire problems are most pronounced.

Beyond the threat to lives and property, these increasingly occurring disasters raise a number of public health concerns that Fielding School faculty are working to address.

Studying the health impacts of exposure to wildfire smoke is challenging given that the smoke levels are constantly shifting, which makes it difficult to determine where and at what levels residents are being exposed. In an effort to tackle the issue, Jerrett is part of a research group that has developed a machine-learning model incorporating satellite imagery, atmospheric chemistry models, ground-based information on pollution levels, and other factors known to influence pollution, such as traffic and land use, to predict with high levels of confidence the location of the smoke plume on a given day. In linking that information to data on hospital visits and admissions, Jerrett and his colleagues have found significant effects on respiratory disease during the wildfire period in the areas that experience steep elevations of fine particular matter — the small particles that can penetrate deep into the lungs.

Beyond the immediate health effects, Jerrett points to the need to better measure the ongoing chronic health impacts of wildfires that are occurring on a regular basis in or near major population areas. “During these fires in California, we see pollution levels that are more like Beijing, China, or New Delhi, India,” he says. “And as the fires are becoming both larger and more frequent, we’re interested in what it means to go through two or three of these events, where people are getting doused with Beijing levels of pollution for a month or so at a time.”

Much of the ash and particulate matter deposited in homes as a result of wildfires has the potential to transform into toxic gases that can affect health, Jerrett adds. “Our concern is that if people return to their homes without having them professionally cleaned by an industrial hygienist, they  could unknowingly expose themselves to unhealthy indoor air for months at a time.”

Jerrett is also working with Sudipto Banerjee, professor and chair of the Fielding School’s Department of Biostatistics, along with doctoral students Jonah Lipsitt and Gregory Watson (MS ’11), to develop so-called counterfactual models that would help to guide policies and strategic decisions during the fires. The FSPH researchers hope to shed light on issues such as the health impact of investing additional resources in reducing pollution levels during the wildfire, the optimal time to call for evacuations, and the public health consequences of residents ignoring those calls.

Dr. David Eisenman (MS ’02), professor in residence in the Fielding School’s Department of Community Health Sciences and director of the FSPH-basedCenter for Public Health and Disasters, is a practicing physician who has studied the public health impacts of wildfires and other disasters in an effort to inform strategies that enhance the preparedness for and response to these events. The distress that occurs in the wake of a wildfire — being displaced from one’s community and losing social supports, along with the associated psychological trauma — often endures long after the flames have been extinguished, Eisenman notes. He points out that although media coverage often shows fires affecting wealthy areas, the reality is that many communities in areas susceptible to wildfires consist of significant numbers of low-income workers and older adults on fixed incomes. “Often people will say we shouldn’t rebuild, that these are dangerous places, but to these residents this is their community and might be the only place they can afford to live,” Eisenman says.

Eisenman has learned that there can be significant longterm mental health effects from wildfires, even for people who experience no noticeable physical effects or property damage. When he was in Arizona immediately following the2011 Wallow Fire, the largest in that state’s history, Eisenman was struck by the strong attachment residents of the affected communities felt to the surrounding area that had been burned. “Everywhere we went, people said essentially the same thing — ‘I am mourning for the loss of the forest,’” Eisenman recalls. “What they meant was that they had moved to this beautiful U.S. Forest Service land to be part of nature, and it felt like they had lost something very deep and close to them.”

In the aftermath of the Wallow Fire, Eisenman and his colleagues found that “solastalgia” — a term referring to the loss of the solace people derive from their environment when it is damaged — was a strong predictor of poor mental health.

“This is important to recognize because in the case of wildfires, it can take a long time for the land to return to that level of function and beauty that brings the solace back to people,” he says. “And as climate change causes more and more longterm alterations to the environment, we might see solastalgia in other forms.”

Eisenman notes that during the Woolsey Fire, many residents chose to stay and defend their homes despite the urgings of public officials and firefighters that they evacuate. “These are people who might not have had any firefighter training or done anything to make their properties less flammable, but for the most part they are being applauded for their courage in getting on the roof to put out embers,” Eisenman says. “From the public health perspective, if this is going to become more of a phenomenon we should better understand the risks for everyone involved.”

The mental health effects of surviving a wildfire or other natural disaster tend to endure long after the television cameras have left. Vickie Mays, a professor in the Fielding School’s Department of Health Policy and Management, spent five years as part of a response and resiliency team that helped to rebuild the mental health infrastructure after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. “Being there several times a year over the course of several years provided a perspective on some of the scars that are left from these types of events,” Mays says.

She notes that in the weeks following a disaster, much of the focus is appropriately on tending to people’s short-term needs through counseling and social services, but long-term mental health consequences are too often overlooked. In many cases, Mays says, these relate to actions residents take during and immediately after the event. “It’s heartbreaking to see people haunted over decisions about whether to evacuate, particularly if it ends up going awry and affects other members of their family,” Mays says. After the disaster, she notes, survivors are often forced to quickly reach decisions about rebuilding, and many end up making commitments they later regret.

The level of cohesiveness within a community is a key factor in the post-disaster healing process, Mays adds. “When people’s lives are upended, the extent to which they are able to cope, make good decisions and return to normalcy has a lot to do with how well the neighborhood pulls together and supports each other,” she says. Support is needed not just for homeowners and renters, but also for others who are integral to the community but tend to be forgotten, including members of the informal economy such as gardeners and housecleaners, Mays adds.

Given all of these realities, Mays believes public health efforts should emphasize planning to assist people in making informed judgments during and after a disaster, and to ensure that neighborhoods build the social infrastructure that will facilitate a successful recovery process. “Offering counseling right after a disaster is certainly important,” Mays says. “But from a public health perspective we can do more by preparing communities in ways that limit the damage and enhance the recovery from these events.”  

Photo credit: U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife Service

 

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Concerns about the impact ride-hailing services are having on urban congestion and emissions are growing, so it’s not too surprising that Lyft has a new option to take on one of those issues.

The San Francisco-based company launched “Green Mode,” starting in Seattle, to let people who are concerned with tailpipe pollution request rides in electric vehicles or hybrids instead of gasoline-only models. To encourage more of its drivers to use such vehicles, Lyft is also offering rentals of Chevrolet Bolt EVs through its Express Drive program with free charging for the time being, COO Jon McNeill told Forbes.

The program will expand to California and other markets, but “it was number one on the mind of Seattle drivers and riders,” surveyed about new service options they wanted, he said. “Also because we felt like we could with the charging infrastructure within Seattle, it could be a really fun place to prove out our vision.”

The move is a chance for Lyft to experiment with ways to get more zero-emission vehicles in use ahead of a new California law that will soon require it, Uber and all major ride-hailing companies to do so. Dubbed Electrify California Ride-hailing, the rule kicks in from the early 2020s with ever larger annual targets for percentage of zero-emission vehicles used on ride-hailing platforms.

Since Lyft doesn’t own the vehicles used on its platform, it has to find incentives for drivers to use them since they cost more. That’s why it’s trying the free fuel option.

“Drivers’ biggest costs are fuel and maintenance, so at the outset an EV costs half as much to travel the same distance” as a gasoline car, McNeill said. “Cars that are rented through Express drive receive unlimited free charging.”

Green Mode rides also won’t cost more for riders, Lyft said.

In Los Angeles, where automotive emissions are among the highest in the U.S., the popularity of Lyft and Uber appear to be an added source of carbon pollution, according to a recent report by UCLA’s Daily Bruin. A study by the newspaper determined there are 11,000 short-distance Uber and Lyft rides around the West Los Angeles campus every week.

Those brief trips produce a large amount of tailpipe and carbon emissions and worsen L.A.’s air quality, the report said, citing Yifang Zhu, associate director of the Center for Clean Air and an environmental health sciences professor at UCLA.

Lyft, which expressed some hesitancy to the California EV rules last year, is now fully supportive of the goal, McNeill said.

“We too want to see EVs populate across our entire fleet.”

 

Originally published by Alan Ohnsmain in Forbes at https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2019/02/06/lyft-has-a-green-mod…

 

 

Scientists evaluate promising research hypotheses for understanding environmental triggers in Parkinson’s disease and propose future directions for research in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease

IOS PRESS

Amsterdam, NL, January 31, 2019 – Environmental factors are widely believed to play a key role in the development of Parkinson’s disease (PD), but little is known about specific environmental triggers. Writing in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, scientists review novel research hypotheses and approaches that may help better define the role of environment in the development of PD, especially before a diagnosis can be made based on the characteristic motor dysfunction for which PD is known.

PD is a slowly progressive disorder that affects movement, muscle control, and balance. Despite recent success in unveiling the genetic basis of late-onset sporadic PD, genetic findings may only explain a small portion of cases and cannot be easily extended to disease prevention. “The greatest risk factors for PD are likely environmental and not genetic,” stated Honglei Chen, MD, PhD, of the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA, and Beate Ritz, MD, PhD, of the Departments of Epidemiology, Environmental Health Sciences, and Neurology, Fielding School of Public Health, and Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, CA, USA. “Yet we know relatively little about environmental causes or triggers of PD onset and progression. Identifying these and defining ways to reduce their impact will be great research challenges for the coming two decades.”

Late-onset sporadic PD takes decades to develop, and by the time of diagnosis, some of the neurodegenerative changes are too advanced to slow down, stop, or reverse. On the other hand, environmental factors that cause or trigger its development and modify its progression may come into play during the “prodromal phase,” decades before specific signs and symptoms develop. “This prodromal stage is of major interest for prevention efforts,” explained the authors. “Targeting factors that enter the body via the nose or gut has become even more important since the discovery that the alpha-synuclein protein-related Lewy pathology, which is characteristic of PD, was identified in the nervous systems of the olfactory pathway and the digestive tract.”

During the past two decades, scientists have identified over a dozen environmental factors associated with the risk of developing PD, including pesticide exposures and traumatic brain injury. Other environmental exposures that have been noted as potential risk factors include organic solvents, high-temperature cooked meats and heterocyclic amines, respiratory and gastrointestinal infections, and inflammation in general. There are also reports on inverse associations between PD and smoking, coffee consumption, vigorous exercise, ibuprofen use, and plasma urate.

The authors review the current research, suggest future directions and discuss the potential of novel tools and theoretical frameworks for scientists to design future studies, such as gene-environment interaction and epigenetic approaches.

Braak Hypothesis

The Braak hypothesis presents a unique hypothetical framework for PD development that allows scientists to better conceptualize different steps in the pathogenesis of the PD prodrome and manifest PD. This can also help define the contributions of environmental factors to the different stages of the pathogenic process. The Braak hypothesis states that PD is caused by a pathogen that enters the body via the nasal cavity and subsequently is swallowed and reaches the gut, initiating Lewy pathology in the nose and the digestive tract. According to this hypothesis, PD Lewy pathology develops in six sequential stages, starting in the olfactory bulb or enteric nerves (or both), years if not decades, before spreading to dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra in the brainstem. Exposome Concept

Another concept described by the authors is the exposome, which represents the totality of human environmental exposures over an individual’s lifetime. The authors propose that, together with the Braak hypothesis, the exposome concept provides a theoretical framework for scientists to design future studies to decipher the environmental causes of PD and to develop early interventions that halt its progression to the characteristic motor and non-motor dysfunction in PD.

“We are at an exciting moment to unveil environmental contributions to PD development and progression by taking a life-course approach, considering prodromal stages of PD, and utilizing novel tools to assess environmental exposures,” commented Dr. Chen and Dr. Ritz. “The lifelong contributions of environmental factors to PD are difficult to characterize because of the decades-long prodromal stage of the disease and the difficulty in assessing environmental exposures during this stage. We nevertheless believe it will be possible to assess long-term exposures through large-scale environmental monitoring and by using novel biomarkers that reflect the exposome.”

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CAPTION

Possible contributions of environmental factors to different Braak stages of PD and the PD prodrome.

CREDIT

Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, College of Human Medicine, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA, and Departments of Epidemiology, Environmental Health Sciences, and Neurology, Fielding School of Public Health, and Geffen School of Medicine, University of California Los Angeles, CA, USA

NOTES FOR EDITORS

“The Search for Environmental Causes of Parkinson’s Disease: Moving Forward,” by Honglei Chen, MD, PhD, and Beate Ritz, MD, PhD (DOI: 10.3233/JPD-181493) published in the Journal of Parkinson’s Disease, Volume 8, Supplement 1 by IOS Press. It is openly available at https://content.iospress.com/articles/journal-of-parkinsons-disease/jpd181493.

Dr. Ritz’ Parkinson’s research was supported by the NIEHS under award numbers RO1ES10544, P01ES016732, U54ES12078, P50NS038367, RO1ES013717, R21ES022391, and R21ES024356. Dr. Chen is supported by a start-up fund from Michigan State University (GE100455), the Parkinson’s Foundation (Grant No. PF-IMP-1825), and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs, through the Parkinson’s Research Program (Award No. W81XWH-17-1-0536).

ABOUT THIS SUPPLEMENT TO THE JOURNAL OF PARKINSON’S DISEASE

The Journal of Parkinson’s Disease published a special issue in 2017 to commemorate the 200th anniversary of James Parkinson’s “Essay on the Shaking Palsy,” and we highlighted eight of the most important advances in Parkinson’s research over the past 60 years. As we were working on that special issue, we commented on how the pace of Parkinson’s research has accelerated remarkably. We speculated that there would be more advances in the treatment and care of Parkinson’s disease during the coming 20 years than were evident during the preceding 200 years. Thus, the idea of a collection of short, forward-looking, and visionary articles was born. Eventually, we identified 19 topics for articles, and we are very excited about the outcome. In 1964 Bob Dylan sang “The Times They Are a-Changin’;” this special supplement clearly shows that the field of Parkinson’s is no exception. This supplement to is openly available at https://content.iospress.com/journals/journal-of-parkinsons-disease/8/s1

For additional information contact Diana Murray, IOS Press, at +1 718-640-5678 or d.murray@iospress.com. Journalists wishing to interview the study’s authors should contact Honglei Chen at chenho@epi.msu.edu or Beate Ritz at britz@ucla.edu.

Originally published by Eureka Alert at https://www.eurekalert.org/multimedia/pub/191668.php 

The “sitting is the new smoking” theory started as early as 1961. Researchers in London found that bus drivers had three times more risk of “sudden death” than their conductor colleagues, and established for the first time a link between sedentariness and heart disease.

And the research that has followed since has consistently confirmed it: a report conducted on 800,000 people in the UK in 2012, for example, found that those who sat for the longest periods of time were two times more at risk of diabetes, heart disease and early death.

Just last week, the American Journal of Epidemiology published another study recommending that we cut the overall time that we spend sitting. The team, led by professor Keith Diaz of Columbia University, who had previously put forward the theory that the issue lay in how much time we spend sitting without interruption, suggested that we break sitting time into bouts of under 30 minutes.

“This new study shows that, unlike what we had previously hypothesised, the length of sitting doesn’t matter; even short sedentary time is harmful,” Diaz says. “What helps is movement. You have to replace some of the time that you spend sitting with movement to reduce your overall sitting time.”

The research, conducted on almost 8,000 middle-aged and older adults, concluded that replacing 30 minutes of sitting time with light physical activity like walking could cut risks of early death by 17 per cent; and up to 35 per cent if replacing it with higher-intensity activity.

The body of research dedicated to the dangers of sitting may be extensive; but so far it has failed to clearly define why and how exactly sedentariness impacts our hearts. A slower metabolism can be blamed for higher blood pressure, obesity and for fat clogging around the heart. Or it could be that the time spent sitting means less time spent exercising, which has been shown to improve heart health. The most recent study showed that sitting for more than ten hours a day led to the release of more troponins – a protein that heart muscle cells produce when they are damaged, and which lead to heart disease when they are kept above normal levels for an extended period of time.

A direct link between troponin and sitting is hard to establish, given that many other factors can come into play, such as body mass index or age. But while the exact how remains unclear, it is still giving workers reason to worry – understandably, given the amount of professions now requiring that we sit in front of a screen all day.

The NHS recommends “walking to a co-worker’s desk” instead of using emails, or placing your laptop on a box to work standing. The American Medical Association stated that work settings should offer employees alternatives to sitting all day. And alert entrepreneurs were keen to jump on a business opportunity, creating the much-hyped sit-stand desk, which is forecast to represent a $2.8 billion market in 2025.

Except sit-stand desks, while they may relieve muscular pain, will do little for your heart. Peter Smith, senior public health scientist from the Institute of Medical Science at the University of Toronto, explains that standing for a couple of hours more at work doesn’t require enough energy to significantly reduce cardiovascular risk. “If you were to stand instead of sit for an hour, you would burn 9 extra calories,” he says. “So you would need to stand for six hours more to burn off the energy from a slice of bread. And standing for that long will put you at risk for other conditions like heart disease.”

Solutions like the sit-stand desk, therefore, won’t reduce the risk of heart disease for workers who sit all day. And more importantly, like the avalanche of guidelines delivered by health institutions targeting sedentariness in the office, they have missed a point.

Niklas Krause, a professor in Environmental Health Science at UCLA, explains, studies so far have analysed total sitting time, and failed to differentiate between sitting at work and sitting at home. And that is significant, because it means that although sitting at work seems the most obvious behaviour to change, it is not necessarily the one that is the most harmful.

“Sitting during the entire day is definitely associated with higher mortality compared to people who sit less,” he says. “But studies that have investigated sitting at work separately found that sitting work postures were not associated consistently with any increased cardiovascular disease risk.”

David Rempel, professor of occupational medicine at the University of California San Francisco, agrees: “Studies have found that sitting time at work does not increase risk,” he says. In fact, he continues, if you had to predominantly sit or stand at work, you would probably select sitting as the lesser evil to reduce your cardiovascular risk.

That is far from saying that sitting is good for you. But certain forms of sitting, which have not been given much attention, are a lot more dangerous; particularly forms of sitting that occur in leisure time. And if there is one that researchers all agree to point their fingers at, because of its high correlation to cardiac disease, it is sitting in front of the TV. A behaviour that Diaz describes as “toxic,” especially when it is combined with high calorie intake. And something that is bound to happen to the everyday Joes, he says, who come back from work and have dinner – potentially their most energy-dense meal – in front of the television.

Although you may think that sitting is sitting, there are several reasons that could explain why watching TV in your couch is a lot worse. While you sit in an office, you may take more breaks, walk to meetings, grab a coffee, go to the printer; you will be more likely to be sitting straight; you will be sustaining what Jeroen Lakerveld, associate professor with the Upstream team – a research network focusing on the relationship between the environment and chronic disease risk – describes as “active maintenance”. Not quite the same as slouching in front of Love Island all Sunday.

And with that comes a new dimension to the sitting imbroglio: that of socio-economic background. It has been shown that lower socio-economic positions are linked to higher TV viewing habits, and therefore higher exposure to toxic sitting time. An inequality that Lakerveld found to be confirmed in his research. “In absolute terms, higher-educated people sit more, because they are more likely to have sat office jobs,” he says. “But the much more damaging form of sedentary behaviour – that of sitting on the couch and watching television – is more prominent among those with lower-education backgrounds.”

So is there something that public health institutions should think about, rather than recommending sit-stand desks? Diaz certainly thinks so. The latest study he led did not differentiate between sitting at work and sitting in leisure time. While that doesn’t undermine its final conclusion – we should reduce the overall time we spend sitting by moving more every day – he recognises that it is something that needs to be given more attention.

“Not much of our work is geared towards targeting leisure time,” he says. “Yet it’s when you’re at home that you need to change your behaviour.” So you might want to swap your evening plans to binge-watch Sex Education for a casual walk in the park. It’s worth the effort.

Originally published by Daphne Leprince-Ringuet in WIRED at https://www.wired.co.uk/article/standing-desk-benefits#_=_

ASK DR. SHANE QUE HEE, FSPH professor of environmental health sciences, about the impact of the UCLA Industrial Hygiene Program and his answer is emphatic: “It saves lives.”

So why don’t industrial hygienists — the scientists and professionals who help to protect the health and safety of workers — make regular headlines? Probably because, like many public health practitioners, their work is focused on preventing people from getting sick or injured in the first place.

Que Hee, who directs the FSPH-based training program, explains that industrial hygienists traditionally worked in factories, where they assessed whether workers were exposed to unsafe levels of toxic chemicals and other hazards, and trained them to follow procedures and wear protective equipment. The field has evolved to include oversight of non-factory settings, where industrial hygienists might be responsible for verifying that air filtration and ventilation systems are properly functioning and not exposing workers to polluted air, or that desks, spaces, chairs and work environments are not ergonomic stressors. Industrial hygienists work for large companies, governments, insurance carriers, unions, universities and consulting companies. They often collaborate with epidemiologists, physicians, nurses, safety specialists and toxicologists. They anticipate, identify, evaluate, control and prevent factors that affect worker health, including physical factors (noise, heat, cold, radiation); airborne particles and chemicals; biological exposures such as airborne microorganisms; mechanical stressors such as those causing carpal tunnel syndrome; and factors affecting psychosocial health, including job stress and workplace violence.

“Being an industrial hygienist means you have to be able to measure stressors to show that you have a safe and healthy environment,” Que Hee says. “You need to know how to do a risk assessment to confirm that whatever guidelines or regulations are applicable are obeyed.”

The UCLA Industrial Hygiene Program’s curriculum includes hands-on training using monitoring and safety equipment, field trips, and courses in biostatistics, epidemiology, general environmental health and other scientific fields. Students are taught, for example, not only how to take air samples and submit them to a lab, but also the methods the lab will use to analyze the samples. The program, based in FSPH’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences, was established in 1983 and is part of the UCLA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health. It is supported by the Southern California NIOSH Education and Research Center, one of 18 multidisciplinary occupational health centers of excellence in the U.S., which provides students with some financial support for tuition and living expenses. Students receive MPH, MS and doctoral degrees; currently the program includes 10 students, four of whom are doctoral students.

Nadia Ho entered the program while pursuing dual degrees with FSPH’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences (EHS) and the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. After Ho’s first year at FSPH, she did a summer internship within the environmental health and safety department of defense contractor Northrop Grumman.

“With heavy manufacturing you get exposed to all the aspects of industrial hygiene,” Ho says. “This site [where I interned] makes propulsion and power generation systems and launch platforms for U.S. Navy submarines and aircraft carriers. The process included welding of stainless steel, as well as painting and sandblasting. We had a facilities team that did construction, painting and sandblasting. I was there, absorbing everything. I realized this was really what I wanted to do. It involved worker safety and environmental programs and touched upon everything EHS students learn at UCLA.”

Dr. Niklas Krause, director of the Southern California NIOSH Education and Research Center and FSPH professor of environmental health sciences and epidemiology, says industrial hygienists are in great demand. “All organizations have safety and health concerns, so they need to have a supply of well-trained industrial hygienists,” he says.

Second-year MPH student Jack Arouchian is familiar with the many forms of practice that industrial hygiene can take. Before enrolling at FSPH, he worked with a consulting company where he assessed safety at foundries, bakeries, factories, airports and many other settings. He currently works as an industrial hygienist with the City of Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, where he helps to ensure the safety of lineworkers, individuals who construct and maintain electric power lines. Arouchian recently was asked to investigate a volt explosion, determined that it occurred due to methane gas leaking, and asked the workers to clear the site.

“What I’ve learned [at UCLA] has helped me train an average of 20-30 lineworkers weekly,” he says. “I teach them how to eliminate or minimize exposure to hazardous agents such as asbestos, lead, respirable crystalline silica, noise and heat stress, and what the health effects of contaminants are.”

One of the courses offered by the program explores the health effects posed by physical agents, sources of energy such as noise, vibration and electromagnetic radiation that may cause injury or disease. That course inspired second-year MS student Cynthia Blackman to focus her research thesis on the effects of whole body vibrations experienced by U.S. Navy aircrew and how they relate to back pain. “A lot of the literature says that after a certain amount of time, helicopter pilots experience chronic back pain, but most of those papers were written in the ’80s and ’90s, and they were focused on pilots,” Blackman notes. “I haven’t found a lot of literature focused on aircrew.”

Blackman enrolled in the UCLA Industrial Hygiene Program while serving as a surface warfare officer with the U.S. Navy. Upon graduation, she plans to return to military service, but as an industrial hygienist.

“On one ship, two doors down from where I was working, there was a door that was taped off,” Blackman recalls of her time as a surface warfare officer. “It turned out there was potential lead exposure and we needed to have our industrial hygienist come in and evaluate the space. It made me think, these are the people who are protecting the United States. Who’s protecting them? I want to be the one protecting them.”

 

Originally published in the FSPH Autumn/Winter 2018 Magazine at https://ph.ucla.edu/news/magazine/2018/autumnwinter/article/workplace-we…

The world’s most influential scientific researchers in 2018 include 40 UCLA scholars, including COEH’s Director Dr. Michael Jerrett and faculty member Dr. Beate Ritz.In its annual list, Clarivate Analytics names the most highly cited researchers — those whose work was most often referenced by other scientific research papers for the preceding decade in 21 fields across the sciences and social sciences. (The 2018 list is based on citations between 2006 and 2016.)

The researchers rank in the top 1 percent in their fields in producing widely cited studies, indicating that their work “has been repeatedly judged by their peers to be of notable significance and utility,” according to Clarivate. Current UCLA faculty members and researchers who were named to the list, noted with their primary UCLA research field or fields, are:

• Matthew Budoff, cardiology
• Rowan Chlebowski, oncology and hematology
• Xiangfeng Duan, chemistry and biochemistry
• Gregg Fonarow, cardiology
• Nelson Freimer, human genetics and psychiatry
• Daniel Geschwind, genetics, neurology and psychiatry
• Michael Green, psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences
• Ronald Hays, public health
• David Heber, clinical nutrition
• Steve Horvath, human genetics and biostatistics
• Kendall Houk, organic chemistry
• Yu Huang, materials science
• Stephen Hubbell, ecology and evolutionary biology
• Michael Jerrett, public health
• Richard Kaner, chemistry and materials science
• Peter Kareiva, environment and sustainability
• Ali Khademhosseini, bioengineering and radiology
• Nathan Kraft, ecology and evolutionary biology
• Dennis Lettenmaier, geography, and civil and environmental engineering
• Huan Meng, nanomedicine
• Sabeeha Merchant, chemistry and biochemistry
• Andre Nel, nanotoxicology and nanomedicine
• Stanley Nelson, human genetics
• Keith Nuechterlein, psychiatry
• Stanley Osher, mathematics and engineering
• Matteo Pellegrini, computational biology
• Steven Paul Reise, psychology
• Antoni Ribas, hematology and oncology
• Beate Ritz, public health
• Jerome Rotter, pediatrics and human genetics
• Lawren Sack, ecology and evolutionary biology
• Jeffrey Saver, neurology
• Ali Sayed, electrical and computer engineering
• Michael Sofroniew, neurobiology
• Marc Suchard, biomathematics and human genetics
• Terence Tao, mathematics
• Edward L. Wright, physics and astronomy
• Tian Xia, nanotoxicology
• Yang Yang, materials science
• Jeffrey Zink, chemistry

 

Media Contact

• Stuart Wolpert
• 310-206-0511
• swolpert@stratcomm.ucla.edu

Photo by Alex Proimos

CBS News interviews Dr. Jerrett about the short and long-term health risks from wildfire smoke inhalation. Watch here: https://www.cbsnews.com/video/smoke-from-california-wildfires-could-caus…

For Those Grappling With California Wildfires, Dangerous Air Quality Is a New Risk
NOVEMBER 16, 2018 3:26 PM
by CALIN VAN PARIS
 
 
 

California is still on fire. As of this morning, the Camp Fire in Butte County has burned up 142,000 acres and over 12,000 structures. Sixty-three people are dead and more than 600 are missing. And down south in Los Angeles County, the Woolsey Fire has destroyed 616 structures, with 57,000 still in danger and three fatalities confirmed. Though the numbers alone are breathtaking, there’s something else affecting our respiration: the air quality, which, yesterday in San Francisco, became among the worst in the world.

I live in Sonoma County, home to two of last year’s most destructive wildfires in Northern California—8,900 structures, 245,000 acres, 44 people, all gone. Still, the residual smoke that lingers in the air this week somehow seems even more stifling. The health department issued a warning to stay indoors. Local schools closed down for two days. And if you do go outside, you’ll see almost everyone wearing white masks over their nose and mouth, having the same muffled conversation: “Can you believe this smoke?”

But here’s the discussion I’m more interested in: “What are we really breathing in, and what can we do about it—if anything?”

“The main pollutant that comes from the fire is called particular matter, or PM. The most health-relevant particles are in sizes smaller than 2.5 microns—they’re pretty tiny particles,” says Yifang Zhu, Ph.D., professor of environmental health sciences and acting dean of UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health. Zhu goes on to explain that the national standard for the presence of “PM 2.5” over a 24-hour period is 35 milligrams per cubic meter, which makes for an Air Quality Index of 99. Whenever the index measures 100 or over, she says, it becomes unhealthy. Today in San Francisco, the AQI is around 250.

“Airborne particulates are what we see, what we breathe, and what lodges into our breathing airways,” explains UC Berkeley professor Robert Rhew, Ph.D., who specializes in atmospheric pollution. “Not only are the particulates physically damaging to our lung tissue, they can also contain toxins like heavy metals. So the fact that [the fires] are burning a lot of infrastructure as well as vegetation can lead to very hazardous [health] conditions.”

Both experts contend that the main health concerns right now are short-term, and those with the highest risk of inflammation and disease have preexisting conditions. Children, along with individuals who suffer from asthma, other respiratory conditions, or cardiovascular issues, should stay indoors. If you need to go outside, visit the nearest hospital or hardware store and stockpile N95 masks, which the CDC suggests switching out every eight hours. And the time is probably right to invest in a HEPA air purifier, which can capture particles as small as 0.3 microns, ensuring that, no matter the state outside, your home is safe. As for the long-term effects caused by wildfires? That research is still new.

Beyond air quality, another primary concern to take into consideration during such strained times, and one worth addressing immediately, is the state of your emotional well-being. Research suggests that between 25 and 50 percent of all people exposed to a natural disaster may have some adverse mental health effects. Getting involved with local relief efforts in the community can provide a strong sense of solace and security. And for those who find stillness in meditation, making time to tune out the noise can be deeply grounding.

Yesterday evening, while driving home from San Francisco, the smog in the sky disappeared into the darkness as I approached the Golden Gate Bridge. I realized, for the first time since the fires began, what a relief the nighttime brings, mainly because I can no longer see the foreboding shift in atmosphere. All that’s visible is the moon, which hangs like an orange rind against a pitch black backdrop. It’s beautiful, but surreal, and I’m reminded how easy it is to take something as simple as a clear sky for granted.

On October 31, 2018 in Geneva Switzerland, Dr. Beate Ritz addressed the World Health Organization’s first-ever Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health. Participants included ministers of health and environment and other national government representatives; representatives of intergovernmental agencies, health professionals and other sectors (e.g. transport, energy, etc.), as well as academic, research, and civil society. The conference recognized the need for an aspirational goal of reducing the 7 million annual deaths due to air pollution by 2030, as a contribution to reaching the Sustainable Development Goals. The conference underscored the links between air pollution and the global epidemic of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and positioned the health sector to catalyze actions for health-wise policies on energy, transport, and waste. 

Dr. Ritz’s talk “Air Pollution, Fetal Development, and Children’s Brains: Time to Act” may be downloaded or viewed at the links below.

Download Dr. Ritz’s slides at: http://www.who.int/airpollution/events/conference/CAPH1_Parallel_session…

See the video of her talk at: http://www.who.int/airpollution/events/conference/en/

1. Go to “Parallel Events” in the box for videos on the site

2. Click on session “Reducing Air Pollution and improving children’s health” Oct 31, 2019 11:30-13:00

3. Fast forward to minute 9:00 for Beate Ritz’s talk