11/14/2024


Exposure to unprecedented levels of wildfire smoke is increasing cardiopulmonary mortality and is especially catastrophic to people with preexisting respiratory conditions such as asthma. Wildfire smoke is a mixture of hazardous air pollutants and airborne particulate matter and wildfires are burning larger areas of land and lasting longer, extending the smoke season. The wildfire season is also expected to lengthen as a result of the changing climate. This scoping review examines publications related to wildfires and health in order to explore the ways in which nursing science contributes to research on the health effects of wildfires and strategies to decrease exposure to wildfires and/or wildfire smoke. Nursing's contribution to wildfire research needs to increase to meet the demands of this rapidly growing, international problem. Nurses have an opportunity to protect the public's health through interventional research focused on preventing exposure and applying what is learned to practice. © Copyright 2020 Springer Publishing Company, LLC.Approximately one in eight people in the United States have been diagnosed with asthma. Asthma is associated with significant medical expenditure and has been implicated as a leading reason for chronic school absences. Environmental risk factors such as access to green space and exposure to poor air quality are patterned such that some vulnerable populations may be at higher risk. Using data from DC Health, the Washington, DC, department of public health, this study investigated associations between neighborhood social, built, and natural environments and rates of asthma-related healthcare encounters by ZIP code between 2014 and 2017. We found that significant differences in rates exist between ZIP codes and for different subpopulations. Black boys had the highest overall rate, with 58.49 visits per 1,000 population, ranging by ZIP code from 0 to 88.56 visits. We found that the ZIP code Social Vulnerability Index was consistently associated with rates of healthcare encounters, but not access to green/open space or exposure to high traffic. However, we discuss how the ZIP code level may not be an appropriate level at which to investigate such built/natural environment features because of the proportion of variability that is found within rather than between ZIP codes. We end with a short discussion of ways that nurses, in particular school nurses, could help to address neighborhood environmental risk factors. © Copyright 2020 Springer Publishing Company, LLC.Nurse scientists are ideally positioned to perform environmental health research and it is critical that the role of omics in the complex relationships between environmental exposures and an individual's unique physiology in human health outcomes be appreciated. Importantly, omics can offer nurse scientists a tool to measure exposure, demonstrate molecular phenotypic changes associated with exposure, and potentially uncover mechanisms of exposure-related disease or negative health outcomes. The purpose of this summary is to serve as an overview of omics methodologies for nurse scientists conducting environmental health research and provides future directions of this work as well as exemplar funding opportunities that demonstrate the growing need and interest in this area. The intersection of nursing and exposure science will accelerate the work in environmental health and bring forth translation of research findings into clinical and community practice. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/cefodizime-sodium.html Importantly, this information can better help us understand the variation in response to the environment and support environmental health policy change at the local, state, and federal level to improve community health and well-being. © Copyright 2020 Springer Publishing Company, LLC.Respiratory diseases affect millions of people across the United States annually. Two of the most common respiratory diseases are chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. Mortality rates due to COPD have increased by an estimated 30% between 1980 and 2014, with significant variances among geographic regions. Both acute and chronic ambient exposures to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone have been associated with exacerbations of respiratory diseases in numerous studies, and exposure to air pollutants are considered as the largest health risk factor globally. This study adds to the current literature by reporting the results of a time series analysis of the impact of PM2.5 and ozone on prevalence rates of asthma and mortality rates for COPD at regional and county levels across the southeastern United States for the years 2005-2014. While general reductions in levels of PM2.5 and ozone were demonstrated across all years, a distributed lag model showed continued strong associations between PM2.5 and prevalence of asthma and mortality due to COPD, even at relatively small increases in ambient exposure ( less then 1 μg/m3) across the southeastern United States. The results of the study support the need for additional research that considers factors such as patient demographics, medical histories, and health disparities in combination with ambient exposures to known pollutants. © Copyright 2020 Springer Publishing Company, LLC.The chemical composition of air changes from moment to moment. While the atmosphere may appear clear and cloudless to the human eye, gases, aerosols, and particulates are in constant interaction with Earth's surface under the influence of meteorological conditions. The recent emergence of low-cost, dense environmental air quality monitoring networks suggests growing interest in highly granular temporospatial exposure assessments by scientists and citizens. This chapter describes the utility of leveraging partnerships and resources to collocate a dense network of low-cost air quality sensors with meteorological sensors across a predominantly rural state located in the southeastern U.S. Construction of the network will improve knowledge on the daily, diurnal, and seasonal variations of pollutant exposures in rural and urban areas, the public health impact of extreme climatological and atmospheric events, and socioeconomic factors that heighten risk of exposures and health outcomes. © Copyright 2020 Springer Publishing Company, LLC.