Evaluating the effectiveness of the 'eco-cooler' for passive home cooling.

Constructed with used plastic bottles, the eco-cooler has been widely adopted in resource-poor communities in Bangladesh and other countries. We tested the eco-cooler under controlled conditions using a scientific wind tunnel in a climatic chamber. In our tests, we used seven eco-cooler designs in 27 climate conditions typical of Bangladesh (temperatures of 40 °C, 35 °C, and 30 °C; humidity levels of 70%, 60%, and 40%; and wind speeds of 4.

Air Quality and Health Impacts of Onshore Oil and Gas Flaring and Venting Activities Estimated Using Refined Satellite-Based Emissions.

Emissions from flaring and venting (FV) in oil and gas (O&G) production are difficult to quantify due to their intermittent activities and lack of adequate monitoring and reporting. Given their potentially significant contribution to total emissions from the O&G sector in the United States, we estimate emissions from FV using Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite satellite observations and state/local reported data on flared gas volume. These refined estimates are higher than those reported in the National Emission Inventory: by up to 15 times for fine particulate matter (PM), two times for sulfur dioxides, and 22% higher for nitrogen oxides (NO).

Air pollution benefits from reduced on-road activity due to COVID-19 in the United States.

On-road transportation is one of the largest contributors to air pollution in the United States. The COVID-19 pandemic provided the unintended experiment of reduced on-road emissions' impacts on air pollution due to lockdowns across the United States. Studies have quantified on-road transportation's impact on fine particulate matter (PM)-attributable and ozone (O)-attributable adverse health outcomes in the United States, and other studies have quantified air pollution-attributable health outcome reductions due to COVID-19-related lockdowns.

The effects of cool roofs on health, environmental, and economic outcomes in rural Africa: study protocol for a community-based cluster randomized controlled trial.

Background: High ambient air temperatures in Africa pose significant health and behavioral challenges in populations with limited access to cooling adaptations. The built environment can exacerbate heat exposure, making passive home cooling adaptations a potential method for protecting occupants against indoor heat exposure.

Methods: We are conducting a 2-year community-based stratified cluster randomized controlled trial (cRCT) implementing sunlight-reflecting roof coatings, known as "cool roofs," as a climate change adaptation intervention for passive indoor home cooling.

It's electric! An environmental equity perspective on the lifecycle of our energy sources.

Energy policy decisions are driven primarily by economic and reliability considerations, with limited consideration given to public health, environmental justice, and climate change. Moreover, epidemiologic studies relevant for public policy typically focus on immediate public health implications of activities related to energy procurement and generation, considering less so health equity or the longer-term health consequences of climate change attributable to an energy source. A more integrated, collective consideration of these three domains can provide more robust guidance to policymakers, communities, and individuals.

Assessment of the health benefits to children of a transportation climate policy in New York City.

Background: Assessments of health and environmental effects of clean air and climate policies have revealed substantial health benefits due to reductions in air pollution, but have included few pediatric outcomes or assessed benefits at the neighborhood level.

Objectives: We estimated benefits across a suite of child health outcomes in 42 New York City (NYC) neighborhoods under the proposed regional Transportation and Climate Initiative. We also estimated their distribution across racial/ethnic and socioeconomic groups.

Inefficient Building Electrification Will Require Massive Buildout of Renewable Energy and Seasonal Energy Storage.

Building electrification is essential to many full-economy decarbonization pathways. However, current decarbonization modeling in the United States (U.S.

Home is Where the Pipeline Ends: Characterization of Volatile Organic Compounds Present in Natural Gas at the Point of the Residential End User.

The presence of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in unprocessed natural gas (NG) is well documented; however, the degree to which VOCs are present in NG at the point of end use is largely uncharacterized. We collected 234 whole NG samples across 69 unique residential locations across the Greater Boston metropolitan area, Massachusetts. NG samples were measured for methane (CH), ethane (CH), and nonmethane VOC (NMVOC) content (including tentatively identified compounds) using commercially available USEPA analytical methods.

Air quality and health-related impacts of traditional and alternate jet fuels from airport aircraft operations in the U.S.

Aviation emissions from landing and takeoff operations (LTO) can degrade local and regional air quality leading to adverse health outcomes in populations near airports and downwind. In this study we aim to quantify the air quality and health-related impacts from commercial LTO emissions in the continental U.S.

COVID-19's Impact on American Women's Food Insecurity Foreshadows Vulnerabilities to Climate Change.

The COVID-19 pandemic is wreaking havoc on human lives and the global economy, laying bare existing inequities, and galvanizing large numbers to call for change. Women are feeling the effects of this crisis more than others. This paper explores the pre-COVID relationships and amplified negative feedback loops between American women's economic insecurity, lack of safety, and food insecurity.

Association between maternal exposure to gaseous pollutants and atrial septal defect in China: A nationwide population-based study.

Background: The association between maternal exposure to gaseous air pollutants and congenital heart defects (CHD) remains unclear. The concentration-response relationship and the time windows of susceptibility to gaseous pollutants may vary by pollutant species and CHD subtypes.

Objective: We aimed to examine the relationship between maternal exposures to four species of gaseous pollutants (NO, O, SO, and CO) and atrial septal defect (ASD), which is a common subtype of CHD, and to determine the critical time windows of susceptibility for each gaseous pollutant.

Estimating the Potential Health Benefits of Air Quality Warnings.

National, state, and local air quality authorities issue warnings urging residents to stay indoors or to take other precautions when pollutant levels are expected to exceed defined thresholds. Previous work explores the impact of warnings on specific activities but not the health improvements that might result if individuals fully responded to the recommendations. We estimate these potential health impacts using recent pollution data in three U.

The Influence of Heat on Daily Police, Medical, and Fire Dispatches in Boston, Massachusetts: Relative Risk and Time-Series Analyses.

To examine the impact of extreme heat on emergency services in Boston, MA. We conducted relative risk and time series analyses of 911 dispatches of the Boston Police Department (BPD), Boston Emergency Medical Services (BEMS), and Boston Fire Department (BFD) from November 2010 to April 2014 to assess the impact of extreme heat on emergency services. During the warm season, there were 2% (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0%, 5%) more BPD dispatches, 9% (95% CI = 7%, 12%) more BEMS dispatches, and 10% (95% CI = 5%, 15%) more BFD dispatches on days when the maximum temperature was 90°F or higher, which remained consistent when we considered multiple days of heat.

Fires, Smoke Exposure, and Public Health: An Integrative Framework to Maximize Health Benefits From Peatland Restoration.

Emissions of particulate matter from fires associated with land management practices in Indonesia contribute to regional air pollution and mortality. We assess the public health benefits in Indonesia, Malaysia, and Singapore from policies to reduce fires by integrating information on fire emissions, atmospheric transport patterns, and population exposure to fine particulate matter (PM). We use adjoint sensitivities to relate fire emissions to PM for a range of meteorological conditions and find that a Business-As-Usual scenario of land use change leads, on average, to 36,000 excess deaths per year into the foreseeable future (the next several decades) across the region.

Correction to: Response to "A critical look at 'Energy savings, emissions reductions, and health co-benefits of the green building movement'".

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Air Monitoring Stations Far Removed from Drilling Activities do not Represent Residential Exposures to Marcellus Shale Air Pollutants. Response to the Paper by Hess et al. on Proximity-Based Unconventional Natural Gas Exposure Metrics.

In their study "Assessing Agreement in Exposure Classification between Proximity-Based Metrics and Air Monitoring Data in Epidemiology Studies of Unconventional Resource Development" [...

Population allocation at the housing unit level: estimates around underground natural gas storage wells in PA, OH, NY, WV, MI, and CA.

Background: Spatially accurate population data are critical for determining health impacts from many known risk factors. However, the utility of the increasing spatial resolution of disease mapping and environmental exposures is limited by the lack of receptor population data at similar sub-census block spatial scales.

Methods: Here we apply an innovative method (Population Allocation by Occupied Domicile Estimation - ABODE) to disaggregate U.