Architecture & Urban Planning

How can human communities sustain a long-term existence on a small planet? This challenge grows ever more urgent as the threat of global warming increases.

Most likely the items in your home or office came from overseas. Today's report focuses on the question how those products got to you, and what is the impact on the environment and workers?

If one were playing a word association game and were asked what comes to mind when the terms “food” and “land use” are given, chances are high that the response would be “agriculture.” Yet every stage in the food system, from being grown or raised through being consumed, is place-based. Put differently, everything that happens with our food system involves land use in some way.

Abstract: Current literature is insufficient to make causal inferences or establish dose-response relationships for traffic-related ultrafine particles (UFPs) and cardiovascular (CV) health. The Community Assessment of Freeway Exposure and Health (CAFEH) is a cross-sectional study of the relationship between UFP and biomarkers of CV risk. CAFEH uses a community-based participatory research framework that partners university researchers with community groups and residents. Our central hypothesis is that chronic exposure to UFP is associated with changes in biomarkers.

Editor's Note: The Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation helped fund Sarah's early work on Conservation Development with the Wildlife Conservation Society through a Leadership Grant.