H5N1

California Woolsey fire near nuclear accident site

Via the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists: California fire near nuclear accident site. Excerpt:

Call it another sad chapter in the long and depressing book of governmental failures to properly clean up after nuclear research and production efforts. Last week, the Woolsey Fire—one of three major, climate change-charged conflagrations now afflicting California—apparently started on the grounds of the Santa Susana Field Laboratory, located just south of Simi Valley and west of Los Angeles. 

Closed in 1996, the lab site was home to rocket engine and nuclear reactor research; one of the nuclear efforts—the Sodium Reactor Experiment—led to the partial melt-down of a reactor in 1959 and the release of radioactive material. But as the Los Angeles Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility noted, the Santa Susana site is contaminated in a variety of ways: 

“Decades of nuclear and rocket-engine testing activity, including nuclear reactor accidents and other toxic spills and releases, have resulted in widespread contamination throughout [lab’s] 2,850-acre facility.”  

The California Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) quickly announced that it didn’t believe the fire had released significant amounts of toxins. “Our staff were able to access the site Saturday morning and assess damage caused by the fire,” a Tuesday press release said. 

“We confirmed that the [lab] facilities that previously handled radioactive and hazardous materials were not affected by the fire. Over the weekend our multi-agency team took measurements of radiation and hazardous compounds, both on the site and in the surrounding community. The results from this initial round of testing showed no radiation levels above background levels, and no elevated levels of hazardous compounds other than those normally present after a wildfire.” 

Safecast, an international, volunteer-centered organization formed in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, reported Wednesday that it “had no survey data from the immediate [lab] area prior to the fire, but we had a fair amount of data from nearby communities which showed it to be at normal background levels. Our real-time radiation and particulate sensors in the Southern California region, the closet of which is 30km (about 18 miles) away from [the site], have shown no measurable increases in radiation. Safecast volunteers are on the way to the site, however, so hopefully we will have new data to share soon. Though CalFire indicates that the fire danger in the [lab] area has passed, many roads are still closed, making access difficult.” 

Local activists were not shy about voicing in their disbelief in governmental pronouncements about contamination and the fire. “We can’t trust anything that DTSC says,” West Hills resident Melissa Bumstead said. “DTSC repeatedly minimizes risk from [the lab] and has broken every promise it ever made about the [lab] cleanup. The public has no confidence in this troubled agency.” 

Should it? The Santa Susana Field Laboratory closed 22 years ago, and cleanup efforts remain in the planning stages.

Fine particle air pollution is a public health emergency hiding in plain sight

In The Conversation, Douglas Brugge and Kevin James Lane write: Fine particle air pollution is a public health emergency hiding in plain sight. Excerpt:

Ambient air pollution is the largest environmental health problem in the United States and in the world more generally. Fine particulate matter smaller than 2.5 millionths of a meter, known as PM2.5, was the fifth-leading cause of death in the world in 2015, factoring in approximately 4.1 million global deaths annually. In the United States, PM2.5 contributed to about 88,000 deaths in 2015 – more than diabetes, influenza, kidney disease or suicide. 

Current evidence suggests that PM2.5 alone causes more deaths and illnesses than all other environmental exposures combined. For that reason, one of us (Douglas Brugge) recently wrote a book to try to spread the word to the broader public. 

Developed countries have made progress in reducing particulate air pollution in recent decades, but much remains to be done to further reduce this hazard. And the situation has gotten dramatically worse in many developing countries – most notably, China and India, which have industrialized faster and on vaster scales than ever seen before. According to the World Health Organization, more than 90 percent of the world’s children breathe air so polluted it threatens their health and development.  

As environmental health specialists, we believe the problem of fine particulate air pollution deserves much more attention, including in the United States. New research is connecting PM2.5 exposure to an alarming array of health effects. At the same time, the Trump administration’s efforts to support the fossil fuel industry could increase these emissions when the goal should be further reducing them.

The average human hair is about 70 micrometers in diameter – 30 times larger than the largest fine particle. EPA 

Where there’s smoke … 

Particulate matter is produced mainly by burning things. In the United States, the majority of PM2.5 emissions come from industrial activities, motor vehicles, cooking and fuel combustion, often including wood. There is a similar suite of sources in developing countries, but often with more industrial production and more burning of solid fuels in homes.  

Wildfires are also an important and growing source, and winds can transport wildfire emissions hundreds of miles from fire regions. In August 2018, environmental regulators in Michigan reported that fine particles from wildfires burning in California were impacting their state’s air quality.

Top UK health bodies demand new clean air act

Via The Guardian: Top UK health bodies demand new clean air act. Excerpt:

The UK’s leading health professionals are calling on the government to implement the biggest shake-up of air quality legislation for 60 years in an effort to tackle the country’s growing air pollution crisis. 

The UK Health Alliance on Climate Change (UKHACC) – representing major medical bodies including the Royal College of Nursing, the British Medical Association and the BMJ – is demanding ministers introduce a new clean air act amid growing concern about the devastating health impacts of the country’s toxic air. 

The move follows warnings from several major organisations including the World Health Organization, Unicef and the UN about the scale of the UK’s air pollution crisis.

Laurie Laybourn-Langton, director of UKHACC, said: “The UK’s dirty air crisis has gone on too long, inflicting a large cost on our health, with children particularly vulnerable. To date, the government’s response has been too slow and lacked ambition.”  

He said the government must set out a policy agenda that is sufficiently robust to “deal with the scale of the problem, ensuring health is protected and air pollution levels are rapidly reduced, with support being given to those on the frontline, including councils and the NHS. 

“Crucially, the actions needed to reduce air pollution are also those that improve our health anyway, including through helping more people cycle and walk instead of using cars.”  

Air pollution, UKHACC says, contributes to an estimated 40,000 deaths each year in the UK and costs the economy an estimated £22bn annually.

WHO: How air pollution is destroying our health

WHO has published How air pollution is destroying our health. Excerpt:

As the world gets hotter and more crowded, our engines continue to pump out dirty emissions, and half the world has no access to clean fuels or technologies (e.g. stoves, lamps), the very air we breathe is growing dangerously polluted: nine out of ten people now breathe polluted air, which kills 7 million people every year. The health effects of air pollution are serious – one third of deaths from stroke, lung cancer and heart disease are due to air pollution. This is an equivalent effect to that of smoking tobacco, and much higher than, say, the effects of eating too much salt.  

Air pollution is hard to escape, no matter how rich an area you live in. It is all around us. Microscopic pollutants in the air can slip past our body’s defences, penetrating deep into our respiratory and circulatory system, damaging our lungs, heart and brain. 

The lack of visible smog is no indication that the air is healthy. Across the world, both cities and villages are seeing toxic pollutants in the air exceed the average annual values recommended by WHO’s air quality guidelines. To help people better understand just how polluted the air is where they live, the WHO, UN Environment and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition’s Breathe Life campaign developed  an online pollution meter. 

This year, WHO and partners are convening the first Global Conference on Air Pollution and Health in Geneva on 29 October – 1 November to rally the world towards major commitments to fight this problem. The conference will raise awareness of this growing public health challenge and share information and tools on the health risks of air pollution and its interventions.

This conference will showcase some of WHO’s work on air pollution, including the findings of its Global Platform on Air Quality and Health. This platform whose diverse membership includes researchers, civil society, UN agencies and other partner institutions reviews the data on air quality and health. For example, the platform is working on techniques to more accurately attribute air pollution coming from different sources of pollution. It is also working on improving estimates of air quality by combining the data from various air quality monitoring networks, atmospheric modelling and satellite remote sensing.

See also this opinion piece in The Guardian by Dr. Tedros.

A new culprit is identified in China’s choking smog

Via The New York Times: A New Culprit Is Identified in China’s Choking Smog. Excerpt:

BEIJING — Scientists have found a new culprit contributing to China’s notorious wintertime smog, and controlling it could help sustain the significant improvements in air quality that Beijing and other northeastern cities experienced last winter, according to research published on Thursday.  

Scientists from Harvard and two Chinese universities reported that emissions of formaldehyde — principally from vehicles and chemical and oil refineries — played a larger role than previously understood in producing the thick, toxic pollution that chokes much of the country each winter.  

In a report published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the scientists argued that “a large portion” of the sulfur in the haze was the result of a chemical reaction between formaldehyde and sulfur dioxide released by burning coal. 

China’s efforts to reduce the haze have focused in recent years on reducing sulfur dioxide emissions. While those efforts have showed some success, with drastic declines in pollutants recorded last winter, the research suggests that China could improve air quality still more by directing its efforts — and resources — toward reducing emissions of formaldehyde in vehicles and industrial refining. 

“Our research points toward ways that can more quickly clean up air pollution,” said Jonathan M. Moch, a Harvard researcher and lead author of the study.  

The easiest fixes include improving ignition switches on cars and trucks and fitting nozzles at gas stations with rubber seals to prevent fumes from escaping, he said. Reducing emissions from chemical and oil refineries, which are heavily concentrated in Tianjin, the coastal metropolis near Beijing, could also have a disproportionate impact, he said, but those could prove more difficult to enforce.  

As with efforts to curb the industrial burning of coal, significant cuts in the output of refineries could clash with the government’s economic and political imperatives, particularly at a time when the trade war with the United States has threatened China’s growth. 

When the Chinese Ministry of Ecology and Environment issued its annual guidelines for 28 cities in the northeast last month, it eased requirements for new cuts in emissions somewhat and lifted restrictions imposed last winter that forced many steel mills, coking plants and other factories to shut down for several months. 

That has led many to worry that the coming winter could once again see choking haze many times the safe levels recommended by the World Health Organization.

Deaths of despair: The opioid epidemic is just part of the problem

Via Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health: Deaths of Despair: The Opioid Epidemic Is Just Part of the Problem.

Although recent declines in life expectancy among white Americans, coined “deaths of despair” grabbed headlines, scientists at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health have assembled evidence that these declines are neither a recent problem nor confined to whites. 

As early as 1980, researchers began to observe declines in life expectancy relative to other countries and in various measures of psychosocial well-being. According to the new study, increases in despair over time, up to and including a recent spike in deaths related to opioid use, stem from structural problems, including the failure of democratic institutions and the rising costs of medical care. The paper is published in the American Journal of Public Health.  

“The opioid epidemic is sitting on top of a much longer, and more poorly understood, decline in the health and well-being in the United States,” said Peter Muennig, MD, professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia Public Health. “Virtually any social trend that might correlate over time with changes in health curves is a candidate.”   

There are several plausible contributors to the term coined as “true deaths of despair”—defined broadly as a decline in measures of psychosocial well-being over time. “If there is anything to which one can point that makes the U.S. an outlier in global rankings of health measures, it is rising medical costs which may be compromising Americans ability to satisfy basic needs,” noted Muennig. “These costs are eating into middle-class American’s disposable income.”

Muennig and colleagues describe some of the other more popular and plausible explanations:   

• Failure of democratic institutions and regulations. The United States is falling behind other nations with respect to educational performance, income equality, environmental protection, transportation, waste management, the rule of law, and private gun ownership regulations.   

• Economic stagnation since the 1980s for moderate-income households of all races and ethnicities.   

• A slowdown in immigration. Immigrants are much healthier than native-born people on average.   

• Earlier smoking among white women could be contributing to lagged mortality effects that are surfacing in middle and older ages.   

“The answer rests in a combination of factors,” noted Muennig. “But the attention that has been given to whites as the primary victims of declining health is distracting researchers and policymakers from much more serious, longer-term structural problems that affect all Americans.”

All-cause mortality risk associated with long-term exposure to ambient PM2·5 in China: a cohort study - The Lancet Public Health

Via The Lancet Public Health: All-cause mortality risk associated with long-term exposure to ambient PM2·5 in China: a cohort study. The summary:

Background 

Evidence from cohort studies in North America and Europe indicates that long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2·5) is associated with an increased mortality risk. However, this association has rarely been quantified at higher ambient concentrations. We estimated the hazard ratio (HR) for all-cause mortality from long-term exposure to PM2·5 in a well established Chinese cohort of older adults. 

Methods 

The Chinese Longitudinal Healthy Longevity Survey (CLHLS) is a prospective cohort study of men and women aged 65 years and older enrolled in 2008 and followed up through 2014 for mortality events. We studied individuals for whom residential locations were available in 2008 for linkage to 1 km grids of PM2·5 concentrations, derived from satellite remote sensing. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate the effect of long-term exposure to PM2·5 on all-cause mortality, controlling for age, sex, smoking status, drinking status, physical activity, body-mass index, household income, marital status, and education. We then used our results to estimate premature mortality related to PM2·5 exposure in the population aged 65 years and older in China in 2010. 

Findings 

13 344 individuals in the CLHLS cohort had data for all timepoints, yielding follow-up data for 49 440 person-years. In a 3-year window, these individuals were exposed to a median PM2·5 concentration of 50·7 μg/m3 (range 6·7–113·3). The overall HR for a 10 μg/m3 increase in this value was 1·08 (95% CI 1·06–1·09). In stratified analyses, HRs were higher in rural than in urban locations, in southern versus northern regions, and with exposure to lower versus higher PM2·5 concentrations. Based on the overall HR, we estimated that 1 765 820 people aged 65 years and older in China in 2010 had premature mortality related to PM2·5 exposure. 

Interpretation 

Long-term exposure to PM2·5 is associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality among adults aged 65 years and older in China, but the magnitude of the risk declines as the concentration of PM2·5 increases.

Influence of socioeconomic events on cause-specific mortality in urban Shanghai, China, from 1974 to 2015

William Faulkner was right when he wrote: "The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." Via CMAJ: Influence of socioeconomic events on cause-specific mortality in urban Shanghai, China, from 1974 to 2015: a population-based longitudinal study. The abstract:

Background: Understanding how socioeconomic events influence cause-specific mortality is essential for optimizing disease-control strategies. We characterized long-term trends in cause-specific mortality in a stable population from a very large urban centre. 

Methods: We derived population data from 1974 to 2015 on vital status, demographics and causes of death from the death registration system in Yangpu District, Shanghai, China. We examined temporal trends in mortality and assessed the effects of age, period and birth cohort. 

Results: Over 41 879 864 person-years of follow-up, we analyzed 290 332 deaths: 3.80% from communicable conditions (group 1), 86.50% from noncommunicable diseases (group 2), and 5.56% from injuries (group 3). Age-standardized mortality decreased after 1988 for group 1 (average annual percentage change [AAPC] −6.7, 95% confidence interval [CI] −9.3 to −4.1), after 1995 for group 2 (AAPC −2.9, 95% CI −3.5 to −2.3), and after 1994 for group 3 (AAPC −5.4, 95% CI −6.3 to −4.5), after improvements in public health and clinical service infrastructure and the removal of polluting industries during the 1980s. We observed increased mortality from group 2 and group 3 causes in those born between 1955 and 1965, a period that included the Great Chinese Famine. Cause-specific mortality risks increased in those born after 1949 for cancer and diabetes only. 

Interpretation: Birth cohorts exposed to extreme starvation in early life had increased premature cause-specific mortality in later life. Decreased cause-specific mortality followed improvements in public health, medical infrastructure and pollution control, but not for cancer or diabetes, likely because of exposure to new risk factors.

In Amsterdam, transportation is electrifying (and good public health)

The Tyee has published my article In Amsterdam, Transportation Is Electrifying. Excerpt:

Maybe the Dutch newspapers are full of drivers’ complaints about bikes hogging the roads, but I saw no sign of hostility. Bikes, scooters, mopeds, cars, buses and trams all functioned smoothly together. Pedestrians (voetgangers in Dutch) routinely checked left-right-left before venturing across the street.  

As in Copenhagen, Amsterdam’s cyclists enjoy the advantage of a flat terrain. But they’ve also built the bike into their culture as a common-sense solution to the problem of getting around. 

Common sense is also at work in the rest of the transportation system. When my wife and I caught a cab from Amsterdam’s central train station to our hotel, it was a Nissan Leaf; the driver told us that by 2020 all taxis serving the train station and Schiphol airport will have to be electric.  

That’s just part of Plan Amsterdam, a document so sensible it seems impossible to imagine as a Plan Vancouver. 

Significantly, Plan Amsterdam is more interested in improving air quality than in fighting climate change: 

“Focusing on the health benefits of cleaner air, the city decided to set a target: to create more space for cyclists and pedestrians, to promote clean transport and achieve zero emissions by 2025.… As well as the ambition to improve air quality, this agenda also provides targets with regard to sustainable energy, a circular economy, a climate proof city and making the city more sustainable.” 

Subsidize what you want, tax what you don’t  

Operating on the principle of taxing what you want less of and subsidizing what you want more of, Amsterdam offers big purchase subsidies to companies that switch their cars, trucks and taxis to electric: “Fully electric taxis, company cars or delivery vans receive 5,000 euros [C$7,609] per vehicle, while for plug-in-electric lorries and buses up to 40,000 euros [C$60,874] per vehicle is available.” 

What’s more, electric cars can park free at the city’s numerous charging stations, as long as they’re connected, and such cars also get priority for residential parking permits (which normally take years to obtain). The charging stations, which began to be installed in 2009, helped trigger the growth in electric cars; they’re powered by the wind turbines around Amsterdam harbour. 

Car sharing is a natural fit for electric vehicles. Plan Amsterdam cites Car2go, which went 100 per cent electric to take advantage of the city’s park-anywhere policy. That in turn encouraged Nissan, BMW and Tesla to launch new electric-car models in Amsterdam, while numerous other electric-mobility companies have set up shop in the city as well. 

Starting this year, Amsterdam city council and public transport company GVB are replacing some 200 buses; by 2025 the whole bus system will be emissions-free. The city’s 4,000 taxis run mostly on diesel and “on average they emit 35 times more hazardous emissions than an average petrol passenger car.… all taxis should be fully emissions-free by 2025. The Clean Taxis for Amsterdam Covenant has been signed by all licensed taxi companies in Amsterdam.” 

 The push to clean air goes all the way to smaller vehicles: “Although Amsterdam aims to reduce traffic in the city centre,” the report says, “in recent years the use of most types of vehicles has increased. Moped traffic has almost doubled, showing an increase of 91 per cent between 2008 and 2014. Recent research by Dutch science institute TNO confirmed suspicions raised by previous research: mopeds emit pollutants which are hazardous to health; emissions which can be anything between 10 to 100 times higher in mopeds than in passenger cars and which are directly inhaled by pedestrians and cyclists.” So by 2025 scooters and mopeds will also have to go electric.

Greece's Moria migrant camp faces closure over public health fears

Via Thomson Reuters: Greece's Moria migrant camp faces closure over public health fears. Excerpt:

Greece's biggest migrant camp faces closure next month unless authorities clean up "uncontrollable amounts of waste", the regional governor said, citing public health risks.  

The Moria camp, on the Greek island of Lesbos, has long been described by the United Nations and other human rights organisations as overcrowded and unfit for humans. 

More than 8,300 refugees and migrants are currently in the former military camp in a collection of shipping containers and flimsy tents, more than double its 3,100-person capacity, according to the latest government figures.  

In a notice published on Monday, Christiana Kalogirou, governor of the north Aegean to which Lesbos belongs, said the island's public health inspectors had declared Moria "unsuitable and dangerous for public health and the environment".  

It said inspectors found "uncontrollable amounts of waste", broken sewage pipes and overflowing garbage bins. In addition, living quarters were inadequately cleaned, there was a high risk of disease transmission due to overcrowding and stagnant water and flies were found in the toilets.  

"We are issuing a 30-day deadline ... to remedy all of the problems," the notice addressed to the migration minister and camp director says. "Once it expires we will ban its operation over even just one of the aforementioned problems."  

Last month the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR urged Greece to speed up transfers of eligible asylum-seekers from Aegean islands to the mainland. It said conditions at Moria were "reaching boiling point".