Occupational and Environmental Hygiene (OEH) Seminars

Towards a vision on the future of occupational and environmental health in British Columbia: Beginning the conversation

As incoming head of OEH division Dr. McLeod will outline his thoughts and ideas on current and future training and research needs in the area of occupational and environmental health. This will be an interactive presentation using online polling technology and social media to start a conversation to identify and stimulate action around this important topic.

Click here to view the webinar

For interactive questions and polling app go to https://www.sli.do/

Event code is 9746

Determining causation and creating an exposure history for long latency occupational disease claims – challenges and practical tools

Despite studies showing that occupational exposures are responsible for approximately 2 to 10 percent of all newly diagnosed cancer cases, many cancers are not recognized as being work-related and consequently not filed with the workers’ compensation system. This presentation will provide an overview of the challenges and potential solutions in better establishing evidence of exposure that not only shows medical causation, but also meets the test of legal causation. It will discuss the role of epidemiology in determining a general causal link between a disease and an occupational exposure as well as the need to build a comprehensive occupational history to answer the question of whether an individual work developed the disease as a result of their job.

Quantifying the burden of disease from major sources of ambient fine particulate matter:   Insights from an atmospheric chemist

Air pollution, specifically fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in outdoor air, is recognized by the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) as the leading environmental risk factor for human health, attributable to 7.5% of all deaths in 2016. To reduce exposure to ambient PM2.5, contributions from major emission sources must be quantified. Previous studies have identified coal and residential emissions as dominant sources in polluted regions in Asia and fossil fuel emissions as dominant global sources. These studies, however, have been limited to particular regions or have focused on large, aggregate emission sectors. Here, we expand upon previous work and utilize recent updates to anthropogenic emission inventories and atmospheric chemical transport modeling to quantify the source- and fuel-specific PM2.5 exposure levels for all 195 countries and territories currently included in the GBD. This presentation will focus on methods used to quantify PM2.5 exposure levels and discuss ongoing collaborations to quantify the burden of disease from all major sources.

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Click on presenters name below for personal Evaluation Form

:Minal

:Ehsan

:Soham

1:00pm  Aaron Agyeman - Prevention and FSII officers exposure to TENORM in oil and gas.

Technologically Enhanced Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (TENORM) in oil and gas processing develop from the pre-concentration and distribution of radionuclides in oil ad gas. Radionuclides continue to undergo radioactive decay causing the release of alpha, beta and gamma radiation which are harmful to human health. Worksafe field officers conduct investigation and inspections in environments contaminated with TENORM. Therefore, to ascertain compliance and the protection of health and safety a study was conducted to investigate the extent of radioactive exposure for officers during their mandated work.

1:15pm      Arthur Leung - Health Hazard Exposure Survey of Workers in Aluminum Pot Lining

A health hazard survey was conducted at the Lining Facility located in an aluminum smelting facility, as no exposure monitoring has been performed in the past. This health hazard assessment aims to accomplish the following:

• Stratify the workers into Similar Exposure Groups (SEG);
• Determine compliance with regulatory exposure limits;
• Identify tasks associated with highest exposures;
• Recommend appropriate controls.

1:30pm Hongjie Yu - Respiratory silica and noise exposure survey of employees in building product industry".

During the summer co-op in 2019, industrial hygiene surveys were taken at a large North American building product company. Employees' respiratory silica and noise exposures were measured. Results suggest that employees working as ground men and tower operators are at risk of silica and noise overexposure.

1:45pm         Sana Javaheri -  Occupational Exposure Limit for Hydrogen Sulphide in British Columbia’s Mines.

The purpose of this project was to propose a new worker exposure limit for hydrogen sulphide (H₂S) in Table 2-1 of the Health, Safety and Reclamation Code for Mines in BC. This was achieved by identifying sources of H₂S in BC mines, evaluating the H₂S exposures of worker involved in these processes, assessing the accuracy of electrochemical direct reading instruments (DRIs),conducting a literature review of the health effects, reviewing the exposure limits set in other jurisdictions to evaluate their underlying evidence and rationale, and investigating the feasibility of a new limit with regards to practicality of implementation.

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Click on presenters name below for personal Evaluation Form

: Aaron

:Arthur

:Sana

:Hongjie

Where Matters:  The Health and Economic Impacts of Where We Live

There is a public health crisis happening right now. Total health expenditure in Canada was estimated to be up to $253.5 billion ($6,839 per person) for 2018. This represents 11% of Canada’s gross domestic product according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. For example, obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes place tremendous pressure on our healthcare system.  There is an increasing consensus that the postal code of the neighbourhood where we live is as important as our genetic code. Studies have shown that land-use decisions and transportation investments to enhance neighborhood walkability and access to green space can significantly affect how you travel and your physical activity, and exposure to air pollution, traffic safety and crime, and noise.  Very few studies have examined how transportation investment, neighbourhood walkability and access to green space are associated with less chronic disease and lower health care cost.  To date, existing evidence used to inform major transportation investment decisions have rarely accounted for the potential health impacts and related costs of these factors.

The Where Matters Study aims to incorporate health into local and regional policy-making by examining the multiple pathways linking the way our communities are planned and designed with people’s travel and physical activity patterns, chronic disease risk and health care cost.

Matt Shupler

4th year PhD Candidate

Approximately 2.5 billion individuals (~40% of global population), primarily in rural areas of Asia (>1.5 billion), Sub-Saharan Africa (>500 million) and Latin America (>50 million) are exposed to harmful household air pollution (HAP) from cooking and heating with polluting fuels (e.g. wood, crop waste, animal dung, coal) in rudimentary stoves. Exposure to HAP was the second highest environmental risk factor in the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) 2017, with an estimated 1.6 million attributable deaths annually. Residential combustion of polluting fuels is also a major contributor to outdoor air pollution and emissions of climate-forcing agents, including up to one-third of global anthropogenic emissions of black carbon.

Few multinational studies have examined multilevel (e.g. household, community, national) factors associated with households switching from polluting to clean (gas, electric) primary cooking fuels. Longitudinal epidemiological studies of HAP exposure are also sparse due to the financial and time intensity associated with such studies. The Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology (PURE)-Air study, one of the largest HAP exposure assessments to-date, was carried out among rural communities of eight countries: Bangladesh, Chile, China, Colombia, India, Pakistan, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. The study design enabled an examination of physical, environmental and contextual determinants of primary cooking fuel switching and household air pollution concentrations. The concentrations measured in the PURE-Air study will be used in one of the largest epidemiological analyses of cardiovascular and respiratory disease burden due to cooking and heating with polluting fuels.

Dr Alex Bigazzi

Assistant Professor, UBC Dept. of Civil Engineering and School of Community and Regional Planning

A closer look at energy expenditure and pollution inhalation during urban cycling: Physics, physiology, and travel behaviour

Although urban cycling is widely known and promoted as physically active transportation, the actual physics of utilitarian cycling have been given little attention in transportation engineering and planning. In contrast, the field of sports science has developed detailed data and models of road bicycle performance, but only for sport and racing cyclists. What can we learn about utilitarian cycling by integrating knowledge of the physical attributes of bicycles and cyclists? Findings will be presented from recent and ongoing studies aiming to quantify these relationships and enhance travel analysis tools with an understanding of the physical aspects of cycling.

Can a single strand of hair be used to monitor exposure to toxic metals?

Hair is a growing keratinous tissue comprised of sulfur. As such, the sulfur in the hair can bind the many elements present in circulating blood, including toxic metals. Since hair is metabolically inert once formed, the elements retained in the tissue become locked in, so as the hair grows it can record changes in blood element concentrations over time. Using laser ablation on single strands of hair, exposure histories can be revealed for toxic metals. But, there are some caveats, including external contamination by air, water, and hair treatments. Here we will discuss occupational exposure to lead and other metals, compare hair and blood concentrations, effects of contamination on hair concentrations, examine another growing keratinous tissue (nails) for metal monitoring, and provide forensic case studies from an inadvertent poisoning event, and the historic Franklin Expedition.