Filtering by Subject: Environmental Health and Protection
Published: 2021-02-23
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 [...]
Published: 2021-01-21
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment
Ninety percent of rice is produced in Asia, where it provides half of calories consumed, making it critical to food security. The 640 million rural agricultural workers of Asia are especially vulnerable to hot and humid weather, which impacts health and productivity; we show that heat hazard exposure increased significantly from 1980 to 2019. Around half of rice production occurs in locations and [...]
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 per-and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as concerning and bioaccumulative compounds of which the use and environmental burden must be reduced. In the specific context of 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 had [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Published: 2020-03-30
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Published: 2019-04-24
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 [...]
Published: 2019-04-03
Subjects: Earth Sciences, Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Indicators and Impact Assessment, Environmental Monitoring, Environmental Sciences, Natural Resources and Conservation, Physical Sciences and Mathematics, Sustainability
An estimated 8.3 billion tonnes of non-biodegradable plastic has been produced over the last 65 years. Much of this is not recycled and is disposed into the sedimentary system, has a long environmental residence time and accumulates in sedimentary systems worldwide, posing a threat to important ecosystems and potentially human health. We synthesise existing knowledge of seafloor microplastic [...]
Published: 2019-04-02
Subjects: Environmental Health and Protection, Environmental Sciences, Physical Sciences and Mathematics
The application of agricultural pesticides in Africa has high negative effects on human health and the environment. To analyse the effect, spatial data characterizing the environmental fate of agricultural pesticides are needed. However, poor availability and quality of data that quantify pesticide application and pesticide fate limit direct analysis of the effect. This study selected key [...]