Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Assessment Of Children’S Personal And Land Use Regression Model-Estimated Exposure To No2 In Springfield, Massachusetts, Sarah Esenther

Public Health Theses

Personal NO2 measurements were taken for a cohort of seventh-grade students (n=25) attending a magnet school in Springfield, MA with an elevated prevalence of pediatric asthma (17.2%). These personal measurements were compared with exposures predicted through a land use regression (LUR) model constructed from built environment and land use characteristics across the area to assess personal exposures in NO2 exposures within the cohort. Springfield, Massachusetts was chosen as the study location because of its elevated prevalence of pediatric asthma (19%) compared to the state average (11%) coupled with the recognized sensitivity of asthmatic children to traffic-related air pollutants. The exposure …

Nitrous Oxide: Use In Labor & Delivery And Steps Toward Healthcare Sustainability, Bethany Sanchez

Public Health Theses

Objective: This study explores trends in procurement for 3 hospitals in Connecticut over a four-year period to better understand how much N2O is released. N2O use and frequency of conversion to epidural after N2O, as well as emergency cesarean section after N2O use is also examined. A plan for N2O destruction technology testing is outlined.

Background: Nitrous Oxide (N2O) is a well-documented greenhouse gas (GHG) and ozone-depleting agent. N2O use continues to be unregulated, and concurrently it has also become more widely adopted for use in labor and delivery in the US, though it has been popular in Europe and …

The Freshair Wristband: Comparison Of Personal Exposure Measured Using Different Wearable Form Factors, Elizabeth Ziying Lin

Public Health Theses

Organic air pollutants are widely used in building materials, personal care and household products. Studies have been linking the exposure to these organic air pollutants with adverse health outcomes, including respiratory, cardiovascular, neurobehavioral outcomes, and cancer. Techniques to measure personal exposure to organic air pollutants include backpacks containing filters/pumps, and a set of single pollutant monitors. These techniques usually involve solvent extraction of filters. They are expensive, time-consuming, and inefficient which are not suitable for large scale, longitudinal exposome studies. The FreshAir samplers were developed to capture a wide range of compounds simultaneously throughout the exposure, its high degree of …

Fungal Community Characterization And Machine Learning Classification Of Building Mold Status Between Pre- And Post-Remediation, Truc T. Ly

Public Health Theses

As part of a larger sampling campaign with mold inspectors across the US, samples (dust and direct mold) from 11 New York homes during pre- and post-remediation were analyzed by sequencing the interspaced transcribed region of extracted DNA and bioinformatic methods. Overarching findings from this study include: 1) pre/post- remediation fungal communities exhibit subtle differences and 2) larger degrees of fungal community differences exist between direct mold and settled dust. Mainly known as environmentally derived fungal species, Cladosporium ramotenellum and Rhodosporidium diobovatum were the two main taxa to be abundant among post-remediation samples. The thermophilic fungi, Thielavia terrestris, was higher …