Environmental public health tracking: piloting methods for surveillance of environmentally related diseases in England and Wales

An effective environmental public health tracking system integrates data and intelligence on environmental hazards, exposures, and health outcomes to focus interventions on reducing the impact of environmental contamination on public health. Most work in this area in the UK has focused on assessing data on hazards that are relatively easy to obtain. However, most hazards will present no actual risk and information on exposure is required to make an effective risk assessment. Obtaining exposure data is technically challenging, expensive, and potentially raises ethical concerns. Consequently, the Health Protection Agency is exploring methods for targeting geographical zones for efficient detailed environmental assessment (including exposure assessment). This paper describes and assesses three methods (indirect standardization, statistical process control (SPC) and kernel density contouring) for the surveillance of potentially environmentally related diseases for this purpose. While the evaluation demonstrates the utility of the three methods, particularly SPC, the comparison was limited due to ethical approval issues.     

Arsenic, Cadmium, Lead, and Mercury in surface soils, Pueblo, Colorado: implications for population health risk

Decades of intensive industrial and agricultural practices as well as rapid urbanization have left communities like Pueblo, Colorado facing potential health threats from pollution of its soils, air, water and food supply. To address such concerns about environmental contamination, we conducted an urban geochemical study of the city of Pueblo to offer insights into the potential chemical hazards in soil and inform priorities for future health studies and population interventions aimed at reducing exposures to inorganic substances. The current study characterizes the environmental landscape of Pueblo in terms of heavy metals, and relates this to population distributions. Soil was sampled within the city along transects and analyzed for arsenic (As), cadmium (Cd), mercury (Hg) and lead (Pb). We also profiled Pueblo’s communities in terms of their socioeconomic status and demographics. ArcGIS 9.0 was used to perform exploratory spatial data analysis and generate community profiles and prediction maps. The topsoil in Pueblo contains more As, Cd, Hg and Pb than national soil averages, although average Hg content in Pueblo was within reported baseline ranges. The highest levels of As concentrations ranged between 56.6 and 66.5 ppm. Lead concentrations exceeded 300 ppm in several of Pueblo’s residential communities. Elevated levels of lead are concentrated in low-income Hispanic and African-American communities. Areas of excessively high Cd concentration exist around Pueblo, including low income and minority communities, raising additional health and environmental justice concerns. Although the distribution patterns vary by element and may reflect both industrial and non-industrial sources, the study confirms that there is environmental contamination around Pueblo and underscores the need for a comprehensive public health approach to address environmental threats in urban communities.     

Chemical ecology in coupled human and natural systems: people, manioc, multitrophic interactions and global change

Chemical ecology provides unique perspectives for managing plant/human interactions to achieve food security. Allelochemicals function as chemical defences of crop plants, enhancing yields. While ingested allelochemicals can confer health benefits to humans, at higher concentrations they are often toxic. The delicate balance between their positive and negative effects in crop plants is influenced by many factors. Some of these—how environment affects optimal levels of defence, how metabolic interactions with nutrients affect toxicity of ingested allelochemicals—are the province of chemical ecology. These biological factors, however, interact with social factors, and neither can be studied independently. Chemical ecologists must work together with social scientists to understand the overall system. Here, we illustrate such an integrative approach, analysing the interactions between people and the major tropical crop manioc, which contains cyanogenic glucosides. Polymorphism for cyanogen levels in manioc facilitates analysis of how costs and benefits of crop defences vary among social systems. We first show how people/manioc interactions diversified in this crop’s Amazonian homeland, then turn to the remarkable cultural adaptations of African farmers since manioc’s introduction 400 years ago. Finally, we evaluate new coevolutionary challenges in parts of Africa where people are still unfamiliar with a potentially dangerous crop. Current environmental and social catastrophes have restricted farmers’ options, resulting in acute problems in health of humans and ecosystems. We show that high cyanogen levels confer important agronomic advantages, but also impose costs and constraints that can only be understood when biology is coupled with analysis of social, cultural and economic factors. Detoxifying manioc technologically requires know-how, time, water and other resources. Detoxifying residual dietary cyanogens metabolically depends on being able to grow, or to buy, the nutrients required for detoxification, primarily sulphur-rich proteins. Solutions that appear adaptive today may not be in the future, as changing climate, rising atmospheric CO₂ levels and decreased access to fertilizers affect productivity of crops and the nutrient and allelochemical composition of the foods they are used to produce.     

Income inequality and willingness to pay for environmental public goods

We study how the distribution of income among members of society, and income inequality in particular, affects social willingness to pay (WTP) for environmental public goods. We find that social WTP for environmental goods decreases (increases) with income inequality if and only if environmental goods and manufactured goods are substitutes (complements). We derive adjustment factors for benefit transfer to control for differences in income distributions between a study site and a policy site. For illustration, we quantify how social WTP for environmental public goods depends on the respective income distributions for empirical case studies in Sweden and the World at large. We find that the adjustment for income inequality can be substantial.     

How public health impact is addressed: a retrospective view on three different oil spills

Spanning over a half century, over 38 “major” oil spill accidents have occurred, with the Deep Water Horizon disaster proving to be one of the largest oil spills on record. It is during these environmental disasters where the public community gathers together to participate in the clean-up effort and government entities coordinate various action plans. Whether it is using (1) workers to apply chemical dispersants to facilitate the remediation of oil in impacted areas or (2) volunteers to pick up “tar balls” from the beach shorelines; public health concerns during an oil spill are warranted for consideration. The purpose of this review was to illustrate a need for increase in scientific advancement and governmental focus on detecting and mitigating public health effects following an oil spill disaster. With focus on the Exxon Valdez, Prestige, and Gulf oil spills, the governmental and scientific community responses were assessed. Using the human-environmental system model, this review illustrates how the model can be used to address human-health concerns following exposure to an oil spill stressor.     

Water environment security indicator system for urban water management

Water environment security (WES) is defined in terms of three aspects: first, that it meets basic demands due to industrial and domestic usage; second, that it protects public health from acute and chronic threats; and third, that measures are adopted to ensure sustainable ecological functioning of freshwater resources. Limitations associated with current water environment security indicators in China ?? including inefficiency in terms of environmental monitoring, inappropriate indicators and parameters that do not take sufficient account of local water characteristics, and a lack of management targets ??leads to a failure of effective water management. To achieve better water environment management, a systematic approach, encompassing several steps including establish ideal indicator system and narrow down the scope, screen priority pollutants, identify local characteristics and organize discussion workshop, should be followed to establish a comprehensive water environment indicator system. A case study in Suzhou is included to demonstrate the detailed operational procedures used to assess the risks associated with poor management practices relating to water environment security as well as design an appropriate water environment security indicator system.     

Micronutrient deficiencies in maternity and child health: a review of environmental and social context and implications for Malawi

It is well documented that micronutrient malnutrition is of increasing concern in the developing world, resulting in poor health and high rates of mortality and morbidity. During pregnancy, deficiency of iron and zinc can produce cognitive and growth impairment of the foetus, which may continue into infancy. Iron and zinc are essential micronutrients for both plant growth and human nutrition. Despite significant work in the areas of soil fertility, crop biofortification and dietary interventions, the problems of micronutrient deficiencies persist in Africa. There is a need to examine why communities have not embraced intervention strategies which may offer health benefits. Bottom-up, interdisciplinary approaches are required to effectively study the relationships between local communities and their environment, and to assess the impact their behaviour has on the cycling of micronutrients within the soil–plant–human system. From a detailed consideration of diverse influencing factors, a methodological model is suggested for studying the barriers to improving micronutrient uptake within rural communities. It combines environmental understanding with health and social factors, emphasising the need for and potential benefits of understanding and coherence in true interdisciplinary working.     

Economic and Social Dimensions of Environmental Behavior: Balancing Conservation and Development in Bhutan

Abstract: One of the primary approaches to environmental conservation emphasizes economic development. This conservation‐and‐development approach often ignores how development affects sociocultural characteristics that may motivate environmental behaviors (actions that actively benefit or limit one's negative impacts on the environment). Evolutionary anthropologists espouse a theoretical perspective that supports the conservation‐and‐development approach. Others believe sociocultural factors are the foundation of environmental behavior and worry that development will erode the values and norms that may shape such behavior. My research assistants and I surveyed 170 individuals from eight villages in two communities in Bhutan to explore whether economic (wealth, market integration) or social (religious behaviors, environmental values, social capital) factors are better indicators of environmental behavior. I used multilevel modeling to analyze use of fuelwood, use of agricultural chemicals, and tree planting, and to determine whether social norms were associated with these behaviors. Although economic factors were more often associated with these behaviors than social factors, local conditions and control variables were the best indicators of behaviors. Furthermore, economic factors were not always associated with positive environmental outcomes. Instead, farmers attempted to make the best economic decisions given their circumstances rather than seeking to conserve resources. Although religion was not a strong predictor of any of the behaviors I examined, I found evidence that the understanding of Buddhist philosophy is growing, which suggests that social factors may play a more prominent role as Bhutan's development progresses. My results highlight the need for conservation planners to be aware of local conditions when planning and implementing policies aimed at motivating environmental behaviors and that economic and social motivations for conservation may not be mutually exclusive.     

Using the paired comparison methodology to assess environmental values in the coastal zone of Ghana

Like many developing countries, Ghana is grappling with environmental issues, such as the degradation of coastal natural resources. In an attempt to ameliorate the current state of affairs, broad institutional arrangements and policy interventions have been put in place. However coastal natural resources are still being overexploited and the effects of this are felt more strongly by certain groups (such as women and the rural poor) than others. This has led to the argument pointing to an urgent need to include local resource users as active participants in environmental decision making and to incorporate their environmental values in the management of coastal natural resources. Using empirical data from women in two Ghanaian coastal communities, this paper highlights the importance of exploring how the environmental attitudes and values of women might be considered in the management of local coastal natural resources. It assesses effectiveness of the paired comparison methodology in this respects and how this method can be also used to prioritise their environmental concerns. The results show that in both areas respondents place the greatest importance on the coastal natural resources as sources of wealth creation and of food, values which are often described as being “anthropocentric”. The paper thus argues that having discovered that the ecological value placed on natural resources is low, initiatives that could win the support of people would be those that link the livelihood and wellbeing to coastal NRM. It emphasizes the fact that conservation cannot exist outside of people and social systems; nor will it succeed unless they are linked to the welfare of resource users.     

Die Rolle von Kommunikation in der Umweltbewertung

Goal and Scope

Planning projects concerning the environment often provoke problems due to a lack of transparency of the applied scales and the appropriate evaluation methods. This paper therefore examines the general structure of all valuation processes before describing the character of the economic evaluation method in detail. From this point of view, requirements on planning processes are coming out which are to be achieved if their duty — the provision of public goods — is to be carried out efficiently.

Features

It will be shown that from an economist’s perspective a planning procedure acts as a surrogate of the market in coordinating individual’s preferences. The reasons for the inefficient level of the provision of environmental goods by private producers are their main characteristics: non-rivality and non-excludability; therefore public goods do not possess prices. Thus environmental goods have to be produced by cooperation and planning processes have to guarantee this. The main character of planning procedures is be seen in communication processes which is documented by a narrative study.

Results and Conclusions

Planning projects concerning the environment are strongly contingent on communication processes. Thus, they are also controllable by communication. The interdisciplinary research in communications shows that cooperative behaviour which is required for planning projects that should provide public goods can be benefited by applicative communication technologies. In this juncture (social) norms more and more emerge to act an important part in conveying cooperative behaviour. Especially so called ‘Sozialtechniken’ seem to be able to activate such norms.

Outlook

From the economist’s point of view planning projects concerning the environment mostly desiderate two things: Firstly, the procedures and methods which are applied to evaluate the regarding environmental goods in many cases suffer from transparency. Secondly, individual’s preferences predominant by the local population and accordingly by the directly involved parties are mostly not acquired adequately to achieve an efficient allocation of environmental goods. Applying more communication technologies to solve these two problems in the future both an increase of efficiency and an increase of the acceptability of such planning projects can be expected.     

Adaptive social impact management for conservation and environmental management

Concerns about the social consequences of conservation have spurred increased attention the monitoring and evaluation of the social impacts of conservation projects. This has resulted in a growing body of research that demonstrates how conservation can produce both positive and negative social, economic, cultural, health, and governance consequences for local communities. Yet, the results of social monitoring efforts are seldom applied to adaptively manage conservation projects. Greater attention is needed to incorporating the results of social impact assessments in long‐term conservation management to minimize negative social consequences and maximize social benefits. We bring together insights from social impact assessment, adaptive management, social learning, knowledge coproduction, cross‐scale governance, and environmental planning to propose a definition and framework for adaptive social impact management (ASIM). We define ASIM as the cyclical process of monitoring and adaptively managing social impacts over the life‐span of an initiative through the 4 stages of profiling, learning, planning, and implementing. We outline 14 steps associated with the 4 stages of the ASIM cycle and provide guidance and potential methods for social‐indicator development, predictive assessments of social impacts, monitoring and evaluation, communication of results, and identification and prioritization of management responses. Successful ASIM will be aided by engaging with best practices – including local engagement and collaboration in the process, transparent communication of results to stakeholders, collective deliberation on and choice of interventions, documentation of shared learning at the site level, and the scaling up of insights to inform higher‐level conservation policies‐to increase accountability, trust, and perceived legitimacy among stakeholders. The ASIM process is broadly applicable to conservation, environmental management, and development initiatives at various scales and in different contexts.     

Conservation geopolitics

We reviewed recent work concerning the impact of geopolitics on wildlife conservation (and vice versa) and identified future priorities in conservation geopolitics research. Geopolitics is understood as both an analytical focus on geopolitical practices (especially concerning the behavior) of countries with respect to territory and national security and a set of theories developed to explain and predict those behaviors. We developed a typology of core geopolitical practices of relevance to conservation: territorial practices of colonization and the management of migrations and borders, and security practices relating to military, economic, and environmental security. We identified research that considers how these practices affect conservation situations and outcomes, noting the recent emergence of conceptual developments such as “environmental geopolitics” and “geopolitical ecology” that draw on multiple fields within the social sciences to theorize the links between geopolitics and environmental management. We defined a "geopolitical perspective" as a focus on geopolitical practices combined with an explicit engagement with geopolitical theory and identified conservation situations where this perspective could contribute to analytical clarity. We suggest the most pressing questions in conservation research to which the geopolitical perspective might contribute are how political and economic differences between countries affect biodiversity outcomes, how geopolitical practices to address those differences facilitate or frustrate conservation efforts, how national borders and human and wildlife movements can be better managed for the benefit of both, and how the most effective conservation strategies can be best selected to suit existing (and future) geopolitical realities.     

Determining association networks in social animals: choosing spatial–temporal criteria and sampling rates

Social Network Analysis has become an important methodological tool for advancing our understanding of human and animal group behaviour. However, researchers tend to rely on arbitrary distance and time measures when defining ‘contacts’ or ‘associations’ between individuals based on preliminary observation. Otherwise, criteria are chosen on the basis of the communication range of sensor devices (e.g. bluetooth communication ranges) or the sampling frequencies of collection devices (e.g. Global Positioning System devices). Thus, researchers lack an established protocol for determining both relevant association distances and minimum sampling rates required to accurately represent the network structure under investigation. In this paper, we demonstrate how researchers can use experimental and statistical methods to establish spatial and temporal association patterns and thus correctly characterise social networks in both time and space. To do this, we first perform a mixing experiment with Merino sheep (Ovis aries) and use a community detection algorithm that allows us to identify the spatial and temporal distance at which we can best identify clusters of previously familiar sheep. This turns out to be within 2–3 m of each other for at least 3 min. We then calculate the network graph entropy rate—a measure of ease of spreading of information (e.g. a disease) in a network—to determine the minimum sampling rate required to capture the variability observed in our sheep networks during distinct activity phases. Our results indicate the need for sampling intervals of less than a minute apart. The tools that we employ are versatile and could be applied to a wide range of species and social network datasets, thus allowing an increase in both the accuracy and efficiency of data collection when exploring spatial association patterns in gregarious species.     

Graphical spatial models: a new view on interpreting spatial pattern

Graphical models provide an important tool for facilitating communication between scientists, decision-makers, and statisticians—many complicated ecological processes can be described in terms of “box-and-arrow” conceptual diagrams (e.g., Shipley in Cause and correlation in biology: a user’s guide to path analysis, structural equations and causal inferences, Cambridge Universtiy Press, Cambridge, 2000; Clark and Gelfand TRENDS in Ecology and Evolution 21:375–380, 2006). In particular, problems in landscape ecology often involve modeling relationships among multiple physical and/or biological variables that may operate on differing spatial scales (e.g., Rossi et al. in Ecol Monographs 62:277–314, 1992; Legendre et al. in Ecography 25:601–615, 2002; Overmars et al. in Ecol Model 164:257–270, 2003; Brown and Spector in J Appl Ecol 45:1639–1648, 2008; Koniak and Noy-Meir in Ecol Model 220:1148–1158, 2008). These problems are inherently multivariate, though researchers commonly rely on univariate methods, such as spatial regression models, to address them. In this paper, we introduce a multivariate method—graphical spatial models—that extends path analysis to incorporate spatial autocorrelation in one or more variables in a directed graph. We show how both exogenous and endogenous ecological processes as defined by Legendre et al. (Ecography 25:601–615, 2002) and Lichstein et al. (Ecol Monographs 72:445–463, 2002) can be represented in a graph. Most importantly, we show how to translate graphs representing these ecological processes into statistically estimable models. We motivate our theoretical results using an example of stream health data from the Willamette Valley, Oregon. For these data we are interested in the spatial pattern within both riparian land use and an index of stream health, and whether there is an association between land use and stream health, after accounting for these spatial patterns. We use a graphical spatial model to address these ecological questions simultaneously. We find that the health of a stream decreases as the percent of developed land within a 120-m riparian buffer increases; interestingly, there is only evidence of spatial pattern within land use.     

Hydro-epidemiology: the emergence of a research agenda

There is a growing international awareness of the health risks associated with water, and particularly in developing countries. For example: (i) a child dies in Africa every 30s due to malaria—a disease related to stagnant water, (ii) every year flooding causes many deaths world-wide, with infant mortality due to diarrhea from contaminated flood waters posing the biggest threat, and (iii) poor sanitation and its relation to hepatitis A continues to be a serious problem. A revealing measure of the extent of such global problems is that more than half of the hospital beds in the world today are occupied by people with water-related diseases. Addressing these issues mandates an interdisciplinary approach by the world’s scientific and engineering community. In this spirit a workshop was held in Phoenix to provide a forum where epidemiologists, hydraulics researchers and other stakeholders of varied backgrounds (e.g., policy makers, environmental groups etc.) could all participate in a debate on a future agenda for hydro-epidemiology. The principal outcome of the workshop was a significant appreciation of the potential for interdisciplinary research and development in hydro-epidemiology and the major contribution that hydraulics professionals could offer, in partnership with the public health community, in addressing such water related disease control and prevention challenges.     

Seeing,believing, and behaving: Heterogeneous effects of an information intervention on household water treatment

Providing information about environmental health risks only sometimes induces protective action. This raises questions about whether and how risk information is understood and acted upon, and how responses vary across contexts. To characterize such variation, we stratified a randomized experiment related to household water quality across two periurban areas in Cambodia. When we showed specific evidence of water contamination to lower-SES households who were initially more optimistic about water safety, they altered their beliefs about health risk and increased their demand for a treatment product. However, demand for the treatment product among higher and initially more pessimistic SES households did not change significantly. These findings highlight the importance of better understanding heterogeneity in the specific drivers of responses to health risk information.     

Generation of Priority Research Questions to Inform Conservation Policy and Management at a National Level

Abstract: Integrating knowledge from across the natural and social sciences is necessary to effectively address societal tradeoffs between human use of biological diversity and its preservation. Collaborative processes can change the ways decision makers think about scientific evidence, enhance levels of mutual trust and credibility, and advance the conservation policy discourse. Canada has responsibility for a large fraction of some major ecosystems, such as boreal forests, Arctic tundra, wetlands, and temperate and Arctic oceans. Stressors to biological diversity within these ecosystems arise from activities of the country's resource‐based economy, as well as external drivers of environmental change. Effective management is complicated by incongruence between ecological and political boundaries and conflicting perspectives on social and economic goals. Many knowledge gaps about stressors and their management might be reduced through targeted, timely research. We identify 40 questions that, if addressed or answered, would advance research that has a high probability of supporting development of effective policies and management strategies for species, ecosystems, and ecological processes in Canada. A total of 396 candidate questions drawn from natural and social science disciplines were contributed by individuals with diverse organizational affiliations. These were collaboratively winnowed to 40 by our team of collaborators. The questions emphasize understanding ecosystems, the effects and mitigation of climate change, coordinating governance and management efforts across multiple jurisdictions, and examining relations between conservation policy and the social and economic well‐being of Aboriginal peoples. The questions we identified provide potential links between evidence from the conservation sciences and formulation of policies for conservation and resource management. Our collaborative process of communication and engagement between scientists and decision makers for generating and prioritizing research questions at a national level could be a model for similar efforts beyond Canada.     

‘How corporate social responsibility can be integrated into corporate sustainability: a theoretical review of their relationships’

The notion that corporations are expected to have social and environmental performance standards and practices while meeting their financial and legal obligations is commonly referred to as corporate social responsibility (CSR) or corporate sustainability (CS). Previous studies have discussed whether the two terms are converging or should be used as stand-alone concepts. After reviewing the trends in development of CSR and CS, and the various viewpoints on the relationships between the two, we propose a relationship model to better understand how CSR can be integrated into CS as either a transitional stage or ultimate goal for a corporation. This study aims to provide researchers and practitioners with further insights on the adoption of CSR and CS. The model is intended to provide a plausible view of the relationships between CSR and CS to help to lessen the confusion and ease the communication both between and within these fields.     

大气颗粒物暴露与健康效应研究进展

大气颗粒物一直是影响我国大多数城市空气质量的首要污染物,且呈现出与欧美不同的煤烟、机动车尾气以及开放源复合型污染并存的高浓度污染态势,已有研究发现颗粒物的短期或长期暴露均会对人体产生不良的健康效应。本文从环境科学、暴露科学、环境流行病学和环境毒理学研究等方面系统综述了大气颗粒物健康效应研究的方法和进展,可为我国的大气颗粒物健康效应研究与大气颗粒物环境质量标准的修订提供方法学参考和经验借鉴。目前我国PM10污染尚未得到有效控制,细颗粒物(PM2.5)的污染也已引起关注,建议在不同区域开展空气污染健康效应的系统研究。     

Less attention paid to waterborne SARS-CoV-2 spreading in Beijing urban communities

• A survey on individual’s perception of SARS-CoV-2 transmission was conducted. • Waterborne transmission risks are far less perceived by individuals. • Precautions of preventing wastewater mediated transmission are implemented. • The precautions for wastewater transmission are less favored by the public. • Education level differs the most regarding to waterborne transmission perception. SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in various environmental media. Community and individual-engaged precautions are recommended to stop or slow environmentally-mediated transmission. To better understand the individual’s awareness of and precaution to environmental dissemination of SARS-CoV-2, an online survey was conducted in Beijing during March 14–25, 2020. It is found that the waterborne (especially wastewater mediated) spreading routes are far less perceived by urban communities. The precautions for wastewater transmission are less favored by the public than airborne and solid waste mediated spreading routes. Such risk communication asymmetry in waterborne transmission will be further enlarged in places with fragile water system. Furthermore, education level is the most significant attribution (Sig.<0.05) that causes the difference of awareness and precautions of the waterborne transmission among the respondents, according to the variance analysis results. Our survey results emphasize the urgent need for evidence-based, multifactorial precautions for current and future outbreaks of COVID-19.