Sustainability of residential environmental interventions and health outcomes in the elderly.

Background: Research has documented that housing conditions can negatively impact the health of residents. Asthma has many known indoor environmental triggers including dust, pests, smoke and mold, as evidenced by the 25 million people in the U.S.

Asthma, COPD, and home environments: Interventions with older adults.

Background: We describe a multifaceted home environmental intervention project involving low-income older adults with asthma who have a greater risk of asthma-related respiratory impacts because they spend up to 90% of their time in the home where many allergens and respiratory irritants are found. Although sufficient evidence suggests that home interventions are effective in improving health of children with asthma, the Task Force on Community Preventive Services has stated that evidence is insufficient for the effectiveness of home interventions on adults with asthma.

Objective: To evaluate the hypothesis that multifaceted home environmental interventions improve the respiratory health and reduce asthma triggers for older adults with asthma.

Unsustainable Wind Turbine Blade Disposal Practices in the United States.

Finding ways to manage the waste from the expected high number of wind turbine blades in need of disposal is crucial to harvest wind energy in a truly sustainable manner. Landfilling is the most cost-effective disposal method in the United States, but it imposes significant environmental impacts. Thermal, mechanical, and chemical processes allow for some energy and/or material recovery, but they also carry potential negative externalities.

Detection of allergen sources in the homes of sensitized children.

Objective: To identify the presence of environmental factors linked to the onset of allergies and asthma in the homes of children participating in an early detection program that were identified with sensitivity to common allergens in the region of Sonora, Mexico.

Methods: A walkthrough assessment was carried out in the homes of sensitized children; the research tools were the questionnaire and environmental checklist proposed by the Lowell Healthy Homes Program of the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.

Results: The results showed the presence of environmental allergen sources, to which most of the children in the study are sensitized, as well as the environmental conditions and habits that determine the quality of the indoor air of the households, were both related to triggering allergies and asthma in this population.

Healthy homes: in-home environmental asthma intervention in a diverse urban community.

Objectives: We evaluated health outcomes associated with in-home interventions in low-income urban households with children with asthma.

Methods: A comprehensive health and environmental assessment and subsequent intervention were completed in 116 households with 170 enrolled children with asthma. Home health workers provided household safety, asthma prevention education, and targeted environmental intervention to decrease asthma triggers and improve household safety.

Community-university partnerships: achieving the promise in the face of changing goals, changing funding patterns, and competing priorities.

An important challenge that community-university partnerships face is how to maintain themselves in the face of changing goals, priorities, and funding. Partnerships often form as a result of some sort of "spark:" an incident, perhaps, or the identification of a shared need or common concern. Often, external funding is sought to provide the majority of resources for the establishment of a partnership and for the implementation of the partnership's action plan.

Sustainable development: a better holistic view.

This article offers a critique of an article by Margrit Hugentobler that proposes a multi-systems level framework to guide sustainable development initiatives and evaluate completed projects. While praising Hugentobler's analysis of inadequacies with the United Nations' concept of sustainable development and her proposal for an integrative approach, this article raises concerns about the proposed framework's ability to equally achieve economic, environmental, and social objectives. As a better alternative, the author suggests a non-hierarchal, holistic framework.