Environmental Health

My MPH practicum experience was with InterIm Community Development Association’s Danny Woo Community Garden to launch the Restaurant 2 Garden project.

Exposure to per-and poly-fluorinated substances is increasingly in the public eye. The National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a report advising increase surveillance screening for those exposed to high levels.

Under the guidance of the NW Pediatric Environmental Health Speciality Unit (PEHSU), we developed two educational resources regarding Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) and potential exposures and health impacts on children.

We use AERMOD modeling to estimate the carbon monoxide air pollution impact by idling cars at Whitman Elementary School in the City of Tacoma.

The IPC Plan is used to implement preventative measures to prioritize the health and well-being of all employees and animals on farms.

Human and wildlife communities depend on healthy marine environments to provide myriad resources and support. Harmful algal blooms (HABs), phenomena in which algae rapidly produce large amounts of biomass and often toxins, are becoming more frequent, widespread, and severe.

Wastewater surveillance has long been used to aid the global public health effort to eradicate poliovirus. More recently, wastewater surveillance has been implemented to help understand the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Shortly after it was discovered to be shed in stools, the virus was detected in sewage around the world.

Commensal rodents are a widespread problem in densely populated cities, where they live in close proximity to humans. These rodents can transmit numerous diseases to humans and domestic animals and are a threat to public health.

Organophosphate (OP) pesticides are extensively used to support agricultural practices in Washington State. OP exposure is associated with both asthmatic populations and agricultural communities. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the correlation between OP pesticide exposure in agricultural community, with respiratory health outcomes, associated with asthma.

Background: The United States is experiencing increasing temperatures and heatwaves due to anthropogenic climate change. Days of extreme heat lead to higher rates of morbidity and mortality and place greater demand on healthcare systems.

Background: Terpenes are a broad class of volatile and semi volatile organic compounds with over 40,000 different known structures, that are emitted by a wide variety of flora. Terpene concentrations vary in different forest settings.

Background: JP-8, Jet A-1, and Jet A are kerosene-based aviation fuels. Jet fuel combustion produces complex pollutant mixtures including VOCs, CO2, CO, NOx, SOx, PAHs and PM. Particles are characterized by size, with ultrafine particles (UFPs -- those particles < 100 nm in diameter) typically quantified by particle number concentration.

The 2018 Environmental Performance Index (EPI) named air pollution as the number one environmental threat to public health. Traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) is a sizable contributor to global air pollution, and diesel exhaust (DE) is a major source of TRAP (Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy, 2018).

Intro: Understanding how indoor environments can not only affect but also shape human health is a new area of emerging research. Considering that we spend a large portion of our daily lives indoors, dust is a major complex environmental mixture we are exposed to every day.

Wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 provides an approach for assessing theinfection burden across a sewer service area. For these data to be useful for public health, measurement variability in relation to normalization methods need to be established.

Pacific Northwest wildfire smoke events have been increasing in prevalence and severity over the past three decades, resulting in documented negative health outcomes in adults. However, when examining the effect of wildfire smoke on pediatric health, the literature is scarce.

Perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCAs) are widespread environmental pollutants for which human exposure has been documented. PFCAs at high doses were known to regulate xenobiotic transporters partly through PPARα and CAR in rodent models. Less is known regarding how various PFCAs at a lower concentration modulate transporters for endogenous substrates such as amino acids in human hepatocytes.

Background: Particulate matter (PM)-related health effects have been studied extensively, yet wildfire smoke-specific PM health effects and its dose-response relationship have not reached a consensus due to variations in exposure scenarios and health outcome measurements.

Despite the Washington State Environmental Health Disparities Map and the Duwamish Valley Cumulative Health Impacts Analysis assessments being resources for communities to access environmental threats and social vulnerabilities, there is no single map that includes all factors associated with potential chemical mobilization and flood risks.

Staphylococcus aureus are both human commensal bacteria and potential pathogens. The aim of this study was to isolate and characterize methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) from coastal beach and river waters, anchialine pools, sand, and wastewater on the Island of Hawaiʻi, Hawaiʻi.

Workers who come into contact with tuberculosis (TB) patients are at elevated risk of TB infection and disease. Tongue swabbing is an alternative diagnostic sample collection approach that was designed to mitigate this risk. This study assessed risk perceptions among healthcare workers (HCWs) using tongue swabs for TB diagnosis in South Africa during a respiratory virus pandemic.

Background: Adverse health effects of extreme heat in occupational settings are substantial, particularly among outdoor workers who perform physical labor. Core body temperature (CT) is a critical indicator of heat strain. Excessive increase in CT negatively affects physical and cognitive performance and can lead to heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

The contribution of transportation to ambient particulate matter (PM) has increased since 2000 in China. Over this time, Chinese cities have grown rapidly in size, population, car ownership and daily commute distance. These changes have led to increased travel times, exposures to traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) and combined uses of transportation modes during daily commutes.

Antimicrobial resistant bacteria (ARB) can be shared between humans and animals through a common environment. The surveillance of ARB in the environment can inform us about contamination of shared ecosystems, like the Salish Sea, and how that contamination affects both the animals that rely on the ecosystem and humans who also live within it.

Environmental contamination of pathogenic viruses is a common occurrence and leading to a number of skin, enteric, and respiratory infections in occupational, nosocomial, and community settings. Viruses with environmental transmission routes have varied abilities to survive and persist in environmental mediums to aiding in their transmission to susceptible hosts.

Background: Power plants are primary emitters of greenhouse gases and criteria air pollutants, which are associated with harmful health impacts including increased risk of premature mortality.

Introduction: Gentrification is a public health crisis and significant environmental injustice. Rapid gentrification of Seattle unequally burdens and displaces families of color further south in King County. Gentrification changes the environment, forcing readjustments that can compromise the continuity of education, healthcare, housing and employment.

Dementia has been considered a major global public health priority (WHO, 2012). It is very common in older adults (Alzheimer’s Association, 2015b; Seshadri & Wolf, 2007; Weuve et al., 2014) and characterized by the progressive and irreversible loss of memory and mental abilities (Alzheimer’s Association, 2008).

Biosolids are nutrient-rich residual organic matter derived from wastewater treatment. The majority of biosolids in Washington are land applied, with the remaining landfilled or incinerated. In land application, biosolids are mostly applied on agricultural lands or forests as a soil amendment and fertilizer.

Diarrheal disease remains a persistent global health threat and is ranked as the second leading cause of death for children under the age of five, with approximately 525,000 child deaths worldwide annually.