Preprints
Filtering by Subject: Environmental Health and Protection
Multidimensional simulation of PFAS transport and leaching in the vadose zone: impact of surfactant-induced flow and soil heterogeneities
Published: 2021-06-30
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Hydrology, Soil Science
PFAS are emergent contaminants of which fate and transport in the environment remain poorly understood. As surfactants, adsorption at air-water interfaces and solid surfaces in soils complicates the retention and leaching of PFAS in the vadose zone. Recent modeling studies accounting for the PFAS-specific nonlinear adsorption processes predicted that the majority of long-chain PFAS remain in the [...]
Upstream oil and gas production and ambient air pollution in California
Published: 2021-04-14
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Public Health, Oil, Gas, and Energy
Background. Prior studies have found that residential proximity to upstream oil and gas production is associated with increased risk of adverse health outcomes. Emissions of ambient air pollutants from oil and gas wells in the preproduction and production stages have been proposed as conferring risk of adverse health effects, but the extent of air pollutant emissions and resulting nearby [...]
Global climate-driven trade-offs between the water retention and cooling benefits of urban greening
Published: 2021-02-24
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Construction Engineering and Management, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Hydrology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Heat-related mortality and flooding are pressing challenges for the >4 billion urban population worldwide, exacerbated by increasing urbanization and climate change. Urban greening, such as green roofs and parks, can potentially help address both problems, but the geographical variation of the relative hydrological and thermal performance benefits of such interventions are unknown. Here we [...]
Regional disparities and seasonal differences in climate risk to rice labour
Published: 2021-01-21
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment
The 880 million agricultural workers of the world are especially vulnerable to increasing heat stress due to climate change, affecting the health of individuals and reducing labour productivity. In this study, we focus on rice harvests across Asia and estimate the future impact on labour productivity by considering changes in climate at the time of the annual harvest. During these specific times [...]
A machine learning approach for prioritizing groundwater testing for per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)
Published: 2020-10-19
Subjects: Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Geochemistry, Hydrology, Risk Analysis, Water Resource Management
Regulatory agencies are beginning to recognize and regulate per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as concerning environmental contaminants. In groundwater management, testing and mitigation strategies are desirable, but can be time and cost-intensive processes. As a result, only a fraction of all groundwater wells has been tested for PFAS levels, resulting in potentially extended drinking [...]
Increased air pollution exposure among the Chinese population during the national quarantine in 2020
Published: 2020-06-15
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The COVID-19 quarantine in China is thought to have been beneficial for reducing the population exposure to ambient air pollution. The overall exposure also depends, however, on indoor air quality and human mobility and activities, which also changed during the pandemic. Here we integrate real-time mobility data, questionnaire survey on during-pandemic human activity patterns, advanced air [...]
COVID-19 Pandemic – Possible implications and effects of monsoons in the Indian sub-continent.
Published: 2020-06-09
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Environmental Studies, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Social and Behavioral Sciences
The world is facing an unprecedented time owing to the ongoing COVID 19 pandemic. The research community is racing to find a solution to contain the outbreak, leading to the proposals of many possible routes of the virus transmission and its dynamics. The Indian sub-continent is about to experience the monsoon season, which often leads to heavy rainfall and flooding in the region, affecting the [...]
Human Health Benefits of the Minamata Convention on Mercury
Published: 2020-05-17
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Biogeochemistry, Climate, Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The Minamata Convention is a legally-binding international treaty aimed at reducing the anthropogenic release of mercury, a potent neurotoxin. However, its human health benefit has not been quantified on a global scale. Here we evaluate the Convention’s benefit by a coupled climate-atmosphere-land-ocean-ecosystem model and a human mercury exposure component that considers all food categories. We [...]
Danger of groundwater contamination widely underestimated because of shortcuts for aquifer recharge
Published: 2020-05-11
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability, Water Resource Management
Groundwater pollution threatens human and ecosystem health in many areas around the globe. Shortcuts to the groundwater through concentrated recharge are known to transmit short-lived pollutants into carbonate aquifers endangering water quality of around a quarter of the world population. However, the large-scale impact of such concentrated recharge on water quality remains poorly understood. [...]
Do atmospheric plastics act as fomites for novel viruses?
Published: 2020-04-15
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Life Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Plastic particles are ubiquitous in various environmental compartments, the atmosphere being the least explored compartment in terms of plastic pollution. The way that atmospheric plastics affect the biological systems has not yet been explored when compared to aquatic ecosystems. There are many speculated human health impacts, one definite and direct impact of atmospheric plastics would be [...]
Enhanced secondary pollution offset reduction of primary emissions during COVID-19 lockdown in China
Published: 2020-04-13
Subjects: Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Oceanography and Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
To control the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19), China imposed nationwide restrictions on the movement of its population (lockdown) after the Chinese New Year of 2020, leading to large reductions in economic activities and associated emissions. Despite such large decreases in primary pollution, there were nonetheless several periods of heavy haze pollution in East China, raising [...]
Early evidence that COVID-19 government policies reduce urban air pollution
Published: 2020-03-31
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
Governments have a solemn responsibility to ensure the health and well-being of the populations they govern. The COVID-19 pandemic reveals just how serious governments take this responsibility and that restricting activity to limit pathogen spread can have other public health repercussions. Comparisons between February 2019 and 2020 air quality measures reveal that six cities that were impacted [...]
Policy Bridge: Air Quality Impacts from Oil and Natural Gas Development in Colorado
Published: 2019-12-13
Subjects: Environmental Education, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Oil, Gas, and Energy, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The rise of hydraulic fracturing techniques has fostered rapid growth of oil and natural gas extraction in areas across the United States. In the Denver-Julesburg Basin (DJB), which mostly overlaps with Weld County in the Northern Colorado Front Range (NCFR) north of the City of Denver Metropolitan Area (DMA), the well drilling has increasingly approached, and in many instances moved into urban [...]
Information-theoretic Portfolio Decision Model for Optimal Flood Management
Published: 2019-06-27
Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Computational Engineering, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Geomorphology, Hydraulic Engineering, Hydrology, Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Natural Resources Management and Policy, Operations Research, Systems Engineering and Industrial Engineering, Other Civil and Environmental Engineering, Other Engineering, Other Environmental Sciences, Other Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Probability, Risk Analysis, Statistics and Probability, Sustainability, Systems Engineering, Water Resource Management
The increasing impact of flooding urges more effective flood management strategies to guarantee sustainable ecosystem development. Recent catastrophes underline the importance of avoiding local flood management, but characterizing large scale basin wide approaches for systemic flood risk management. Here we introduce an information-theoretic Portfolio Decision Model (iPDM) for the optimization of [...]
Radiation Hazard evaluation and spatial dose rate mapping in mineralized region of Siwaliks: A case study from Una, Kangra and Hamirpur distt, Himachal Pradesh, India.
Published: 2019-04-25
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The following work is a part of wider uranium prospecting programme of the Atomic Mineral Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMD) for mapping radioactive anomalies in mineralized regions of Siwalik, Himachal Pradesh. This study reports the analysis of average activity concentration, potential radiological hazards; radium equivalent activity (Raeq), external hazard index (Hex), internal [...]