Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Interrupted Time Series Analysis To Evaluate Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Health Impacts, Julia Sweatman

Public Health Theses

Abstract

Background & Aims: Fossil fuel combustion emits a spectrum of ambient air pollutants, with the most harmful health effects seen from particulate matter 2.5 μm or less in diameter (PM2.5). Pricing carbon can reduce PM2.5 emissions and yield co-benefits for public health. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a cooperative carbon pricing initiative among twelve states aiming to curb carbon dioxide emissions from the power sector. This preliminary analysis explores methodological approaches to quantify the health benefits associated with PM2.5 changes after RGGI was first implemented in 2009.

Methods: An interrupted time series analysis was performed to compare …

Recommendations For Climate Adaptation To Preserve Connecticut Drinking Water Quality And Quantity, Matthew Salvatore Di Vitto

Public Health Theses

Climate change impacts drinking water both directly and indirectly. Increases in temperature, drought frequency, and precipitation are among the climate impacts which currently and are projected to affect water quality and quantity in the continental United States. These impacts limit access to clean and abundant water sources by damaging habitat, spreading toxic substances via runoff and favoring the growth of harmful algal blooms. States can learn from one another to adopt best practices and policies to increase water resilience around the country. This paper explores how Connecticut can employ strategies from the States of New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Minnesota, …

Melissa: Monitoring The Environment With Living Investigatory Sentinel Species Apis Mellifera, Brady Rowe

Public Health Theses

Without the ability to meaningfully detect an environmental contaminant, public health efforts can get behind the curve, and people suffer for it. Industrial polluters are the major source of environmental contamination. Despite regulation, industrial compliance efforts are often limited by the difficulty of getting samples to analyze due to cost and logistical challenges. The current method requires a compliance officer to gather a sample or rely on self-reported measures from the potential polluters. This process can be remarkably costly both in capital and human labor. These issues can be remedied by relying on the domesticated honeybee to gather the “samples.” …

Extreme Heat Vulnerability And Spatial Accessibility To Cooling Centers In Connecticut, Nicholas Elton

Public Health Theses

Extreme heat is becoming an increasingly prevalent and prominent environmental health issue under climate change. The goal of this study is to evaluate heat vulnerability at the census tract level in the state of Connecticut and assess the spatial accessibility to cooling centers – an extreme heat intervention. A variety of environmental and sociodemographic variables related to heat and health were identified based on previous literature and used in a varimax-rotated principal component analysis to reduce dimensionality and identify key components that constitute a heat vulnerability score. In addition, cooling center locations were identified based on news media and a …

Co-Distribution Of Ambient Light At Night And Incidence Of Human Cancers And Covid-19, Yidan Meng

Public Health Theses

Introduction and BackgroundThere are increasing concerns about the effects of artificial lights on human health, including hormone-related disease and immune functions. In January 2020, the outbreak of COVID-19 disrupted everyone’s life, and people who infected have various severity. Thus, we want to analyze whether people exposed to different ambient light at night (LAN) levels make them more susceptible to COVID-19 for our summer research. Besides the effects of LAN on immune functions, we also discussed the association of LAN and multiple cancers in seven states of Northeastern U.S. We used similar statistical and geographic analysis methods and separate them into …

Genetic Determinants For Cancer Risks With Racial Differences And Asthma, Yinqiao Wang

Public Health Theses

Over the past decade, many studies have found disproportionally higher prostate cancer among men of African ancestry, and testicular cancer incidences among men of European ancestry, compared with men from other ethnicity/race groups. However, genetic determinants that could potentially explain this observation are unclear. This study collected single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) related to the two cancer types and compared the frequencies of each risk allele of SNPs among men of African or European ancestry from several genetic databases. When comparing the frequencies of risk alleles that are associated with prostate and testicular cancers, significant differences were found between those of …

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 …

Multi-State Analysis Of Unconventional Oil And Gas Development And Rates Of Sexually Transmitted Infections In The United States, Nicholaus Peter Johnson

Public Health Theses

Background

Advances in unconventional oil and gas development (UOGD), including hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, have helped position the United States as a world leader in the production of both crude oil and natural gas hydrocarbons. This significant increase in production would not have been possible, however, without the assemblage of a workforce that is predominantly young, male, and mobile. This is significant given that a number of studies have associated similar types of mobile workforces – especially those employed by resource extractive industries – with impacts on the sexual health of the host communities in which these workers operate …

Evaluation Of Sociodemographic Factors And Presence Of Oil And Gas Waste Disposal Wells In Kansas, Katherine Rose Wolf

Public Health Theses

Background and objective: Kansas hosts the second-largest number of wells in the United States for the disposal of oil and gas waste (n = 13,396), which can contain chemicals toxic to human health. In this study we evaluate potential associations between oil and gas waste disposal well locations and sociodemographic characteristics in Kansas.

Methods: We obtained oil and gas production and disposal well data from the Kansas Geological Survey and sociodemographic data at the census block group level from the United States 2013–2017 American Community Survey. We used two-variable t-tests, logistic regression with and without thin plate spatial splines, and …

Using Volatile Organic Compounds In Exhaled Breath As A Biomarker For Early Lung Cancer Detection: A Systematic Review, Jieqiong Zhou

Public Health Theses

Lung cancer has become the most commonly diagnosed cancer and the leading cause of cancer deaths globally. The major problem of the high mortality rate is the late diagnosis. Conventional methods utilized for clinical detection of lung cancer have employed expensive and invasive medical procedures that cause stress, discomfort, and pain to patients, and have demonstrated low sensitivity, substantial false negatives, and risk of radiation exposure. The drawbacks obviate their applicability to large-scale, population-wide screening efforts. This paper reviews the applications of using volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in exhaled breath as a potential approach for early lung cancer detection.

An …

Coarse Particulate Matter Exposure And Inflammation, Emilie Elizabeth Davis

Public Health Theses

Background Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States, and environmental exposures, such as air pollution, contribute to the risk of CVD. While previous studies have found that fine particles, PM 2.5, are associated with CVD risk, fewer studies have considered the effect of coarse particles, PM 10-2.5, on CVD risk and the possible biological mechanism through which this environmental exposure could increase CVD risk. Methods This analysis examines the association between ambient concentrations of PM 10-2.5 and a marker of CVD risk in a cohort of midlife women. Annual questionnaire and clinical data were …

Exposure To Atmospheric Metals Using Moss Bio-Indicators And Neonatal Health Outcomes In Portland, Oregon, Saskia Comess

Public Health Theses

Background: Exposures to certain metals are associated with adverse birth outcomes, including inhibited fetal growth and congenital defects. Previous studies focused on metals such as lead and arsenic, and primarily assessed exposure using biological monitoring, which does not provide insights into sources. Examining exposure to metals via atmospheric pathways is challenging due to a lack of high-resolution air-pollution data. We applied a unique map of atmospheric metal pollution, derived from bio-indicator moss samples, as a screening tool to study neonatal health risks of atmospheric metal pollution in Portland, Oregon, a city of 640,000 people with several metal-emitting industrial sources.

Methods: …

Exploring Pharmaceutical Waste Prevention And Disposal Practices In Nurse Populations, Natasha Wasim

Public Health Theses

Objective: This research study aimed to explore pharmaceutical waste prevention and disposal practices in nurse populations.

Methods: A descriptive, cross-sectional survey was employed through the Qualtrics survey system. The survey questions were designed to probe knowledge, behavior, and attitudes of nurses towards pharmaceutical waste. Participants included intensive care unit nurses

and perioperative nurses in the Yale New Haven Health System.

Results: A total of 104 surveys were collected. Nurses were asked about the importance of proper waste disposal, and 95.2% of nurses (N=99/104) believed that appropriate waste disposal is important to “protect the environment health.” The survey also asked about …

Function Of Piwi-Interacting Rnas In Prostate Cancer, Shunjia Zhang

Public Health Theses

Abstract

Background: As the most common cancer in male, prostate cancer makes up 9.5% of new cancer cases and 4.8% of all cancer death in US in 2018. Though the 5-year survival of prostate cancer is high and multiple treatments are available, the death rate of prostate cancer was still more than 19.5 per 100,000 men per year. With more and more evidence suggested that piRNA may play a more important role in tumorigenesis, we want to find out if piRNAs can be a potential treatment for prostate cancer.

Method: Two Prostate cancer cell lines (PC3, LNCap) and a normal …