The Science of the total environment
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Sci. Total Environ. · Feb 2019
Short-term effects of extreme meteorological factors on childhood hand, foot, and mouth disease reinfection in Hefei, China: A distributed lag non-linear analysis.
Hand, foot, and mouth disease (HFMD) is a major public health issue in China with a high burden of reinfection. Previous studies presented evidence of the relationship between meteorological factors and HFMD incidence, but no study examined the effects of extreme meteorological factors on HFMD reinfection. ⋯ The present study provides evidence that extreme meteorological factors exert delayed effects on HFMD reinfection. Developing an early warning system is necessary for the protection of children from harm due to extreme meteorological factors.
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Sci. Total Environ. · Feb 2019
Complexity versus simplicity in water energy food nexus (WEF) assessment tools.
Approaching water, energy, and food, as interconnected system of systems, as an alternative to traditional silo-based resources planning and management approaches continues to fall short of expectations of its research-backed benefits. The lack of nexus applications in policy and decision making can be related to numerous factors, with the main barrier being the complex nature of "nexus" systems combined with the disarray of tools attempting to model its interconnections. The paper aims to provide a method for comparing the perceived complexity of nexus tools identified by international organizations as well as primary literature sources. ⋯ The results of the comparative analysis of the selected nexus assessment tools concur with literature citing a growing gap between nexus research and applications in actual policy and decision-making settings. Furthermore, results suggest that tools receiving higher complexity scores, while being able to capture details to specific resource interactions, are unable to cover a larger number of interactions and system components simultaneously, as compared to lower complexity score tools. Lastly, the outcome of the analysis point towards the need for integrating more preliminary assessment capabilities, i.e. diagnostics, guidelines, and capacity building, into existing tools that improve the communication and translation of model outputs into policy and decision-making.
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Sci. Total Environ. · Feb 2019
Effect of PM2.5 on daily outpatient visits for respiratory diseases in Lanzhou, China.
The present study assessed the effect of short-term exposure to PM2.5 of daily outpatient visits for respiratory diseases. Electronic records of daily outpatient visits were collected from two large general hospitals in Lanzhou, China from 01 January 2007 to 31 December 2016. Daily air pollution data from the Lanzhou Environmental Monitoring Station and daily meteorological data from the Lanzhou Meteorological Bureau were collected in the same period. ⋯ People aged 18 years or younger were most sensitive to PM2.5, and the influence of PM2.5 was more significant for females than for males. The cumulative effect of the PM2.5 concentration for the number of outpatient visits was greater than its daily effect, and the cumulative effect peaked on day 12. From day 0 to day 14, every 10-μg/m3 increase in the PM2.5 concentration had a statistically significant cumulative effect on the outpatient visits for respiratory diseases among individuals aged 18 years or younger (p < 0.05), reaching a maximum value on day 14 (PM2.5: RR = 1.0213, 95% CI: 1.0128-1.0299).