Workers’ compensation eligibility among residential day laborers

UCLA LOSH releases “WORKERS’ COMPENSATION ELIGIBILITY AMONG RESIDENTIAL DAY LABORERS“. This brief summarizes research conducted by UCLA-LOSH and the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON) on the experiences of day laborers who are injured while working in residential settings in California. Interviews with 64 day laborers show that 1) workers face a wide range of hazards at residential worksites, 2) the injuries they experience can be serious in nature, and 3) these injuries often result in substantial costs to workers and their families. Many of these workers may be eligible for workers’ compensation when injuries occur, but few injured workers benefit from these resources.

The report includes a discussion of the common barriers day laborers face in accessing workers’ compensation resources, and it consider the impact of proposed legislation in California to streamline workers’ compensation eligibility requirements for this workforce.  This work was partially funded by UCLA COEH.

When Air Pollution Is Bad, Know How to Protect Yourself

Newswise — The World Health Organization reported this month that pollution and environmental risks are responsible for 1.7 million child deaths per year. Around the world, pollution is constantly taking a toll on our health – and oz one pollution is especially problematic when the weather gets warmer.

While cities and states need to implement top-down measures to combat air pollution, those who live in particularly susceptible environments – like around major roadways – may not have the luxury of waiting for such changes to take place.

Yifang Zhu, professor of environmental health sciences at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health, says there are steps we can take to protect ourselves and our families from air pollution, which has well-documented negative consequences for childhood asthma, birth outcomes, pregnancy risks, cardiovascular health, and other diseases.

Those steps include:

Understanding wind patterns. Wind changes throughout the day, helping to blow pollutants both toward and away from your home. In California, for example, the onshore and offshore sea breeze is predictable. Close windows when the wind is blowing from the freeway (or another pollutant source) toward your home. When the wind is blowing away from your home, you can open your windows.

Being aware of the time of day. As the weather gets warmer, ozone pollution – created when pollutants from cars, buses and factories react to sunlight – peaks in the early afternoon. If possible, avoid rigorous exercise outside during the early afternoon on summer days and do it another time.

Keeping your indoor air clean. Using a high efficiency (HEPA) air purifier in your house will reduce particle levels in your home, even if the air outside is heavily polluted.

Contact; Ryan Hatoum rhatoum@mednet.ucla.edu 310-267-8304

Orginal Article at http://www.newswise.com/articles/when-air-pollution-is-bad-know-how-to-p…

Access to parks, open spaces in your community can be a health factor

What are the societal factors that influence health?

When Dr. Richard Jackson asks this question, the response often includes some combination of economics, education and culture. Rarely does he hear the one he is looking for: the physical environment of one’s neighborhood.

“If it’s not easy to walk to places, you’re surrounded by unhealthy food choices, and you spend hours each day driving to and from your job, that’s a powerful determinant of your health,” says Jackson, a pediatrician and professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences in UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.

A well-known author, lecturer and consultant on how to align urban environments  with public health goals, Jackson has called the built environment “social policy in concrete,” given the impact of urban planning and architectural design on health and well-being. Unfortunately, Jackson notes, “communities that don’t have a strong voice are more disenfranchised when these decisions are made.”

At the Fielding school, faculty and students are working with community partners and policymakers in Los Angeles and beyond to ensure that decisions about everything from buildings and green spaces to public transit, bike lanes and streetscapes are made with an eye on their public health implications.

Of particular interest is the notion of transportation equity — matching the infrastructure of communities with the needs of their populations.

Michael Jerrett, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences, points out that in Los Angeles and many other cities, inequities persist not just in the ability to get around, but in access to parks and open spaces that are conducive to outdoor activity. In addition to their value to our quality of life, these facilities are critical at a time when sedentary lifestyles are associated with high rates of obesity and related chronic conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and certain cancers.

In a series of studies, Jerrett has found wide-ranging disparities between low-income communities and more affluent areas in both the quantity and quality of park spaces. “People living in low-income communities aren’t getting sufficient access to this health-promoting resource, and when they do have access, the area tends to be more polluted, the park facilities are not as well-maintained, and there is less park programming and less energy going into the programs offered,” Jerrett says.

Most recently, Jerrett’s group found that for pedestrians and bicyclists in Los Angeles, traveling to and from parks is dangerous — with as much as a 50 percent greater risk of traffic accidents in the area within a quarter-mile of the destination.

The study found that the risk is amplified in low-income and predominantly minority communities, in part because of an insufficient safety infrastructure. Jerrett notes that children and young adults are disproportionately at risk for traffic-related injuries and fatalities around parks. “There has been a movement toward instituting safe routes to school and safe routes to transit,” he says. “Given the unequivocal evidence of the benefits of physical activity, we need to also focus on ensuring safe routes to play.” Jerrett is currently consulting with the Southern California Association of Governments to integrate his group’s research into ongoing transportation planning.

Efforts to encourage more walking and bicycling face significant obstacles, and not just around parks. Jerrett notes that in Los Angeles, surveys consistently show personal safety concerns as a major barrier to bicycling.

“Unless you have an integrated system in which people can have options that allow them to bike away from dangerous roads and intersections, safety is going to be a deterrent,” he says. Advocates for more pedestrian-friendly boulevards must also overcome major challenges. “Unlike many European cities that evolved at a time when walking was the predominant mode of transportation, much of Los Angeles was developed around a car-dominated culture,” Jerrett says.

Nonetheless, there is growing momentum behind initiatives to reclaim the built environment for walkers and bikers — as illustrated by the success of CicLAvia, a Los Angeles nonprofit organization that temporarily closes a section of streets to vehicular traffic for Sunday events that promote walking, biking, local commerce and community engagement. CicLAvia reports that it has created more than 110 miles of open streets during its events throughout Los Angeles and has drawn more than 1 million people to these streets since it began in 2010. The next event is set for Sunday, March 26, when streets in Culver City, Mar Vista and Venice will be closed to vehicles.

In 2014, a Fielding school group embarked on a series of studies assessing CicLAvia’s impact. The researchers started with basic questions around who was attending the events and what impact CicLAvia had on businesses along the routes, but they quickly realized that something special was occurring — a dramatic shift in the physical and social environment that, though technically only for a day, could have long-term ramifications.

Among the benefits: improved air quality. A 2015 study led by Yifang Zhu, associate professor of environmental health sciences, measured air pollutants during a CicLAvia event held in and around downtown Los Angeles and found substantial declines in the presence of ultrafine particles and particulate matter measuring 2.5 micrometers or smaller — both of which are associated with increased risk for respiratory and cardiovascular disease.


Courtesy of CicLAvia
UCLA public health researchers have found that CicLAvia events, even if they only last a day, have the potential of delivering longer-lasting health benefits.

“Not only does CicLAvia reduce the concentrations of traffic-emitted air pollutants, but we were also struck that the reduction of particulate pollution extends beyond the CicLAvia route,” Zhu says. Other studies by Fielding school researchers found more good news: significant reduction in crime around CicLAvia sites on the event days.

The researchers found that more than half of the participants surveyed would have been home or sedentary if not at the event. And fewer than half of CicLAvia’s participants arrive by car — opting for transit, biking and walking instead. Initial evidence also suggests that the more events the participant attended, the less likely that person arrived by car. “This could be pointing to alternative transportation behaviors being promoted or reinforced by CicLAvia attendance, though further study is needed,” says Christina Batteate, a Fielding school Ph.D. student who helped spearhead the CicLAvia research effort.

The team also found that when CicLAvia’s temporary public space is located in park-poor, low-income communities, a substantial number of the participants are first-time attendees from the local area. “At each event, thousands of new people are being exposed to this new paradigm of what our city can look like and how fun mobility and social connections can be,” Batteate says. “CicLAvia and other open-streets programs tangibly flip the narrative by saying that pedestrians and bicyclists matter. Even if for a day, this allows the community to envision that it can be something different.”

This story is in the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Magazine.

COEH faculty teach award-winning applied research course

COEH’s Linda Delp and Katy McNamara co-taught the UCLA Luskin Community Scholars course which recently received national recognition in the applied research category from the American Planning Association’s professional institute, the American Institute of Certified Planners, for a 2015-16 study the scholars did on the distribution of goods in Southern California.

Chosen from a nationwide field of candidates, the project was one of two selected to receive the AICP award for applied research. UCLA shares the award with the University of Virginia.

Goetz Wolff, a lecturer in urban planning, was the faculty adviser for the project. He has been a part of the community scholars program since its founding in 1991. Each year since, scholars and students from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs have worked together with community stakeholders to focus on timely and important Los Angeles regional issues and have published their findings and recommendations.

The program is a joint initiative of the Luskin school’s Department of Urban Planning and the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education and was co-sponsored by UCLA Center for Occupational and Environmental Health.

The winning project was focused on the movement and distribution of goods through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and its disproportional negative impact on local communities, labor and the environment.

“The combination of perspectives and skills resulted in a powerful mix with our community scholars,” Wolff said. The program also benefited from the expertise of Linda Delp, who heads UCLA’s Labor and Occupational Safety and Health program and the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, as a co-instructor.

Read the complete story here.

The Clear Thing About China’s Smog

The Clear Thing About China’s Smog
The air pollution that plagues Beijing and other cities worldwide can have short-term and long-term health consequences.

By Devon Haynie | News Editor
Full Story: http://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2017-01-13/the-health-effects-of-beijings-smog

Beijing’s air pollution makes for a well-rounded sensory experience: There’s the sight of the brown haze rolling into the Chinese capital, the sound of the traffic churning underneath it, and a physical feeling, often in the form of “the Beijing cough” – a dry hacking accompanied by an itchy throat.

In terms of air pollution, Beijing and surrounding areas have had a rough winter. In December, the government issued a red alert, its most severe warning in its four-tier system. Schools were closed. Flights were canceled. Construction projects crawled to a halt. Just days ago, the government announced plans to decrease coal consumption and create a new police force to combat the pollution. And for good reason: The health effects of smog go far beyond a nagging cough.

Beijing’s smog isn’t killing thousands right away like the infamous Great Smog of London in 1952 – medical treatment has evolved since then and the chemical makeup of the pollution is different. But the air pollution can trigger short-term effects like heart attacks, asthma attacks and bronchitis, says Dr. Ray Casciari, a pulmonologist with St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California. There’s also a risk that thick smog can cause deadly traffic incidents, much like the one that killed Winston’s Churchill’s fictional secretary in episode four of “The Crown.”

That said, most experts say short-term travel to Beijing is fine for healthy adults.

Yifang Zhu, a professor of environmental health sciences at the University of California Los Angeles, tracks about a dozen UCLA students who study in Beijing for 10 weeks each summer. When they return, she does research on them, testing their urine to see how they’ve been affected by air pollutants. While she can see evidence of the pollution, she says the short-term effects in her students are reversible.

But for the elderly, children and people with existing health conditions, it’s a different story. In those cases, it’s best to avoid exposure, says Terry Gordon, a professor of environmental medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center.

“If you are a healthy person, you have less reason to be concerned,” he says. “But if you are elderly or a child with asthma, you probably should be.”

While the short-term effects of air pollution are concerning, it’s the long-term consequences that really worry researchers. In 2012, 3 million people worldwide died from air pollution-related health effects, according to a recent report from the World Health Organization. In China, more than a million people lost their lives – the highest number of any country.

Air pollution can cause lung disease and cardiovascular disease, as well as cancer and birth defects, says Zhu. But it’s hard to gauge the depth of the health consequences of China’s smog for several reasons, she says.

For one, such high levels of air pollution are a relatively recent phenomenon, and long-term health consequences take time to develop. Secondly, most studies about air pollution-triggered health effects have been conducted in environments with much less pollution than exists in China today.

“L.A. we know has the worst air quality in the U.S., and Beijing is 10 to 20 times worse than L.A.” she says.

In Beijing, officials are primarily concerned with fine particles of air pollution which come mostly from combustion sources. The poisonous particles, known as PM2.5, are small enough they can bypass human mucus and make their way into the lungs. The World Health Organization says PM2.5 levels are safe around 25 micrograms per cubic meter. In December in Beijing, levels were 15 times the guidelines, according to the Associated Press.

Severe air pollution is not a problem limited to China. In fact, other areas in the developing world have it worse. The highest urban air pollution levels are recorded in low-and middle-income countries in the Eastern Mediterranean and Southeast Asia, according to the WHO. Cities in countries like Iran and India actually have worse pollution than Beijing, according to a Washington Post analysis based on WHO data. 

UCLA public health team assesses health impact of state's high-speed rail project

A team from the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health is helping to steer California’s high-speed rail project in a healthy direction. The California High-Speed Rail Authority asked a Fielding School team headed by Brian Cole, lead analyst for the school’s Health Impact Assessment Group, to assess the potential health implications of the system as a whole.

In addition, the team is assessing the health impact on the Fresno-to-Bakersfield portion of the planned project — identified as an area of particular concern by the California Environmental Protection Agency, based on the population’s environmental exposure, health risks and socioeconomic status.

The Fielding School group has been a national leader in the growing movement, which draws on interdisciplinary expertise to assist decision-makers and communities in weighing potential health effects of major projects and policies.

“Transportation affects health in so many ways,” says Cole. “This project will have significant effects, both direct and indirect, through changes not only in transportation habits, but also in economic development and how communities are structured. And the decisions and actions by both the state authority and local governments can go a long way toward maximizing potential benefits and minimizing potential harm.”

While the population in the San Joaquin Valley region covered by the Fresno-to-Bakersfield route may benefit from increased economic opportunity, the Fielding school team is also weighing the potential for negative effects. “There have been cases in which these types of projects have connected between places but divided within,” explains Michael Jerrett, professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Health Sciences and a member of the study team. He points to noise and traffic-safety concerns around the high-speed rail station and the tendency of past projects to route the trains through areas that place a disproportionate share of these burdens on low-income populations and people of color.  

The complete story on the team and the project is in the autumn/winter 2016 issue of UCLA Fielding School of Public Health Magazine. 

Using 21st Century Science to Improve Risk-Related Evaluations

New Report Calls for Use of Emerging Scientific Data to Better Assess Public Health Risks

WASHINGTON – Recent scientific and technological advances have the potential to improve assessment of public health risks posed by chemicals, yet questions remain how best to integrate the findings from the new tools and methods into risk assessment.  A new National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report recommends approaches for using 21st century science to evaluate the many factors that lead to health risks and disease, laying the groundwork for a new direction in risk assessment that acknowledges the complexity of disease causation.

This report builds on the findings from two earlier Academies reports – Toxicity Testing in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy, which recommended a path in which testing of chemicals relies primarily on high-throughput in vitro tests and computational models based on human biology to evaluate potential adverse effects of chemical exposures rather than on animal testing, and Exposure Science in the 21st Century: A Vision and a Strategy, which urged a transformational change in the breadth and depth of exposure assessment that would improve its integration with and responsiveness to toxicology and epidemiology. 

The committee that conducted the study and wrote the report considered the benefits of  many new tools in exposure science, toxicology, and epidemiology.  For example, personal sensors and other sampling techniques now offer unparalleled opportunities to characterize individual exposures, particularly in vulnerable populations, and computational tools have the potential to provide exposure estimates where exposure-measurement data are not available.  Other advances include the further development of cell-based assays that can be used to evaluate various cellular processes and responses and the creation of transgenic animals using gene-editing techniques that can be used to investigate specific questions, such as those related to susceptibility or gene-environment interactions.  And –omics technologies have substantially transformed epidemiology and advanced molecular epidemiology fields that address underlying biology and complement empirical observation.  To ensure these tools and methods are being used to their full potential, the report calls for a collaborative approach among scientists in the relevant fields.

“This report builds on the conceptual foundation established by the two earlier reports and indicates ways that findings from these new reports can be used in practice,” said Jonathan Samet, Distinguished Professor and Flora L. Thornton Chair at the department of preventive medicine, University of Southern California.  “It also identifies critical challenges to be addressed in using 21st century science to better characterize the risks of chemicals for human health.”

The advances in exposure science, toxicology, and epidemiology described in the report support a new direction for risk assessment—one based on biological pathways rather than on observations from lab experiments of effects in animals, and one incorporating the more comprehensive exposure information emerging from new tools and approaches.  The new direction emphasizes that most diseases that are the focus of risk assessment are caused by multiple factors; that is, stressors from multiple sources can contribute to a single disease, and a single stressor can lead to multiple adverse outcomes.  Conditions intrinsic to an individual, such as genetic make-up or life-stage, or conditions acquired from one’s environment, such as psychosocial stressors and nutritional status, can contribute to a disease.  The new direction in risk assessment acknowledges this complexity. 

The four agencies that requested the study – U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Food and Drug Administration, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences – are all involved with application of these 21st century scientific approaches, including their use in various components of risk assessment, particularly hazard identification and exposure assessment. Assessment of risks from chemicals and other agents provides needed information to decision-makers who must find solutions to protect public health. The scientific growth highlighted in this report will lead to better information for answering pertinent questions about the complex health problems that society faces.

The report discusses a number of risk assessment applications that could be improved by newer tools, such as chemical assessment, assessing risks at facilities like hazardous waste sites, and the evaluation of new chemical molecules for which there are no close comparisons.  The report includes several case studies based on realistic scenarios that illustrate ways to incorporate new tools from different fields in assessing the risks associated with known or possibly hazardous agents.  For example, investigations show a strong and causal link between air pollution and lung cancer.  However, there are unanswered questions about what components in air pollution are carcinogenic, if the various components interact with each other, what effects might occur at low exposures, and which groups of people might be at a higher risk for cancer because of certain characteristics, like smoking tobacco.  This case study further explains how advances in toxicology and exposure science, specifically –omics technology, can be used to characterize adverse effects, further refine measurement of exposures to various components, and identify population groups at risk.  It also explores the possibility of unestablished health outcomes caused by air pollution, such as neurodevelopmental issues in children.

The committee emphasized that technological growth is outpacing the development of approaches to analyze, interpret, and integrate the diverse, complex, and large datasets in these fields.  The report also proposes an agenda for enhancing use of the findings from these emerging technologies that includes developing case studies reflecting various situations of decision-making and data availability, testing case studies with multidisciplinary panels, and cataloguing evidence evaluations and decisions that have been made on various agents so that expert judgments can be tracked and evaluated.

Although there are several challenges to achieving the visions laid out in the earlier reports, 21st century science holds great promise for advancing risk assessment and ultimately for improving public health and the environment, the report says.  The committee emphasizes, however, that communicating the strengths and limitations of the approaches in a transparent and understandable way will be necessary if the results are to be applied appropriately and will be critical for the ultimate acceptance of the approaches.

The study was sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Food And Drug Administration, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences.  The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation to solve complex problems and inform public policy decisions related to science, technology, and medicine.  They operate under an 1863 congressional charter to the National Academy of Sciences, signed by President Lincoln.  For more information, visit http://national-academies.org.  A roster follows.

Contacts:

Riya V. Anandwala, Media Relations Officer
Rebecca Ray, Media Relations Assistant
Office of News and Public Information
202-334-2138; e-mail news@nas.edu
national-academies.org/newsroom

Follow us on Twitter @theNASEM

 

Copies of Using 21st Century Science in Risk-Based Evaluations are available at www.nap.edu or by calling 202-334-3313 or 1-800-624-6242. Reporters may obtain a copy from the Office of News and Public Information (contacts listed above).

 

 

THE NATIONAL ACADEMIES OF SCIENCES, ENGINEERING, AND MEDICINE

Division on Earth and Life Studies

Board on Environmental Studies and Toxicology

 

Committee in Using 21st Century Science in Risk-Based Evaluations

 

Jonathan M. Samet1 (chair)

Distinguished Professor and Flora L. Thornton Chair

Department of Preventive Medicine

Keck School of Medicine, and

Director

Institute for Global Health

University of Southern California

Los Angeles

 

Melvin E. Andersen

Distinguished Research Fellow

Division of Computational Biology

ScitoVation

Research Triangle Park, N.C.

Jon A. Arnot

President

ARC Arnot Research and Consulting Inc.

Toronto

 

Estaban Burchard

Professor

University of California

San Francisco

 

George P. Daston

Victor Mills Society Research Fellow

Procter and Gamble Co.

Cincinnati

 

David B. Dunson

Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor

Department of Statistical Science

Duke University

Durham, N.C.

 

Nigel Greene

Director of Predictive Compound ADME and Safety

AstraZeneca

Waltham, Mass.

 

Heather B. Patisaul

Associate Professor

Department of Biology

North Carolina State University

Raleigh

 

Kristi Pullen Fedinick

Staff Scientist

Natural Resources Defense Council

Washington, D.C.

 

Beate R. Ritz

Professor

Department of Epidemiology

School of Public Health

University of California

Los Angeles

 

Ivan Rusyn

Professor of Veterinary Integrative Biosciences

College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

Texas A&M University

College Station

 

Robert L. Tanguay

Distinguished Professor of Molecular Toxicology

Department of Environmental and Molecular Toxicology

Oregon State University

Corvallis

 

Justin G. Teeguarden

Staff Scientist and Chief Exposure Scientist

Environmental and Biological Science Directorate

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Richland, Wash.

 

James M. Tiedje2

University Distinguished Professor and Director

Center for Microbial Ecology

Michigan State University

East Lansing

 

Paolo Vineis

Chair of Environmental Epidemiology

Imperial College

London, United Kingdom

 

Michelle A. Williams1

Dean of Faculty

Harvard Chan School of Public Health

Boston

 

Fred Wright

Professor

Departments of Statistics and Biological Sciences, and

Director

Bioinformatics Research Center

North Carolina State University

Raleigh

 

Lauren Zeise

Director

Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment

California Environmental Protection Agency

Oakland

 

STAFF

 

Ellen K. Mantus

Study Director

__________________________

1Member, National Academy of Medicine

2Member, National Academy of Sciences

Exposure to the BPA-Substitute Bisphenol S Causes Unique Alterations of Germline Function

Concerns about the safety of Bisphenol A, a chemical found in plastics, receipts, food packaging and more, have led to its replacement with substitutes now found in a multitude of consumer products. However, several popular BPA-free alternatives, such as Bisphenol S, share a high degree of structural similarity with BPA, suggesting that these substitutes may disrupt similar developmental and reproductive pathways. We compared the effects of BPA and BPS on germline and reproductive functions using the genetic model system Caenorhabditis elegans. We found that, similarly to BPA, BPS caused severe reproductive defects including germline apoptosis and embryonic lethality. However, meiotic recombination, targeted gene expression, whole transcriptome and ontology analyses as well as ToxCast data mining all indicate that these effects are partly achieved via mechanisms distinct from BPAs. These findings therefore raise new concerns about the safety of BPA alternatives and the risk associated with human exposure to mixtures.

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The Invisible Catastrophe

Over the course of four months, 97,100 metric tons of methane quietly leaked out of a single well into California’s sky. Scientists and residents are still trying to figure out just how much damage was done.

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Indoor air testing for gas leak chemicals continues in Porter Ranch homes

An effort to collect dust from surfaces inside 100 Porter Ranch homes and two schools has been completed by the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, and now officials will focus on indoor air as part of a second phase to test for chemicals left over from a massive natural gas leak.

Phase two began Tuesday and will consist of eight days of air monitoring. Monitors will be set up in 16 homes per day, said Angelo Bellomo, deputy director for health protection at the Los Angeles County Health Department.

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