Category Archives: Community Engagement

Making Models Personal – Air Quality, Smartphones, and Human Health

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Recently the EPA collaborated with the NIEHS  Superfund Research Program (SRP) for the Risk eLearning webinar three-part series on  “Using GIS Tools to Analyze, Compute, and Predict Pollution“.

Andy Larkin
Andy Larkin

This final session focused on Community Engagement  and included a presentation by one of our trainees, Andy Larkin, entitled Making models personal: increasing the impact of atmospheric pollutant models by predicting pollutant levels at Android and iPhone locations.

Over 110 people participated on the webinar. Andy provided an outstanding overview of the mobile app he developed and included future directions and needs.

Presenting as part of this Risk eLearning Series let us demonstrate how GIS chips in smartphones could be used to provide personalized information about air quality. ~Andy Larkin

View webinar archive online
For presentation abstracts and the first two GIS webinars, go to the SRP Risk eLearning webpage.

Key points from Larkin’s presentation

  • Smartphones are one of the newest methods available for collecting location-based information. There are currently more than one billion active smartphone users in the world (source: CBSNews.com).
  • Smartphones can identify a person’s location and pollutant models can predict pollution levels at a given location.  By linking smartphones with pollutant models, it is hypothesized that multiple pollutants can be predicted at smartphone locations.  Geographical constraints are based on the constraint of the underlying pollutant models, and can conceivably cover the extent of the entire world.
  • Sampling and retaining locations at regular intervals can provide a well documented past of predicted pollutant levels at smartphone locations.  Input from the smartphone user about intended future locations can potentially be used to predict pollutant levels at future locations.
  • Sampling data acquired from a group representative of the population can be used to make inferences about spatial and temporal trends regarding pollution level conditions for the entire population
  • To test the proof of principle that smartphones can be linked with environmental maps, Larkin created PM2.5, PM10, and ozone hourly forecast maps for the state of Oregon.  Maps forecast predicted exposure levels at air monitoring stations using Seasonal Integrated Moving Average (SIMA) time series models.  Forecasts at air monitoring stations are then interpolated to cover the entire state using universal Kriging for PM2.5 and PM10, and inverse distance weighing for ozone.  These modeling methods were chosen because they can be validated and evaluated using prediction errors.
  • The future in personal monitoring is combining complementary technologies.
Step 1: The smartphone determines its location and current time, and sends the information to a cloud storage database as a .csv file
Step 1: The smartphone determines its location and current time, and sends the information to a cloud storage database as a .csv file
Step 2: After location values are sent to the cloud storage database, the predicted pollutant concentrations for all models within the database are determined for the given latitude and longitude coordinates
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Step 3: Predicted pollutant values and the original information are then returned to the smartphone in a .csv file format

Reducing Exposure & Preserving Cultural Traditions

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The OSU Superfund Center’s Community Engagement Core is fortunate to have an established partnership with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR).

The recently produced CTUIR – OSU 2012-2013 Newsletter shares the background, summary, and findings of a collaborative research project to understand polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) exposure related to smoked salmon.

salmon
Salmon fillet

Salmon, a first food, is important to the subsistence of Native Americans living in the Pacific Northwest. Smoking salmon is one of the traditional ways to preserve this seasonally abundant food and make it available year round.

People can be exposed to PAHs from breathing contaminated air or eating smoked foods although many other exposure pathways exist.

Each volunteer wore air sampling equipment and turned it on every time they went into the smoking structures.

The data showed the air in the tipi and the smoke shed contained PAHs.

tipi        tipifire       smokehouse

Pictured above from left: Traditional tipi, volunteer tending the fire in the tipi wearing an air sampler in black bag on his hip, traditional smoke shed.

The findings from this study were published in the Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry.
B, Harris S, Matzke M, Cardenas A, Waters K, Anderson K. (2012). Effect of Native American fish smoking methods on dietary exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and possible risks to human health. Journal of Agricultural & Food Chemistry, 60(27), 6899-6906. doi: 10.1021/jf300978m

Indigenous cultures perceive the natural environment as an essential link between traditional cultural practices, social connectedness, identity, and health. Many tribal communities face substantial health disparities related to exposure to environmental hazards. We asked 27 volunteers who were members of the CTUIR their opinions on meanings of health and how their environment interacts with their health.

The findings from the focus group discussions were published in the journal Environmental Justice.

Schure M, Kile ML, Harding AK, Harper B, Harris S, Uesugi S, Goins T. Perceptions of environment and health among community members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.  Environmental Justice. June 2013, 6(3): 115-120. doi:10.1089/env.2013.0022.

In addition, the CTUIR – OSU 2012-2013 Newsletter shares recently appointed members of the Tribal Advisory Board.

We hope you enjoy the newsletter!