Environmental & Public Health

Switzer Fellow Susannah Lerman, Research Ecologist with the USDA Forest Service, is a co-lead of a partnership with the University of Minnesota that will establish the first urban long-term ecosystem research (LTER) site in the Midwest. Funded by a $7.1 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the Minneapolis-Saint Paul (MSP) Long-Term Ecological Research Program will focus on the dynamics of urban nature and the urban social system in the face of rapid environmental and social change.

Christine Fuller was recently featured on an Atlanta news broadcast about how environmental factors, like pollution, impact the COVID-19 vaccine. Watch the segment

The population of Texas today stands at almost 28 million. By 2050, that number is predicted to nearly double to 55 million, with most people clustered in already-dense urban centers like Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, San Antonio, and Austin.Over the next several decades, researchers also project an increase in the frequency and intensity of storms like Hurricane Harvey, as well as more heat, droughts, and floods.

In April of 2019, a team of scientific researchers and documentarians arrived at Mount Everest’s southern basecamp in Nepal to measure the impacts of climate change and human activity on the world’s tallest mountain. The pollution team, led by University of Maine Assistant Professor Kimberley Miner, lugged heavy scientific equipment up the most popular ascent route. At each stop, Miner's team took samples of snow, the same snow climbers were boiling and drinking, the same snow that melted each summer and provided water for people living in the valleys below.

Thawing permafrost is releasing microorganisms, with consequences that are still largely unknown, writes Kimberley Miner in the November issues of Scientific American.

Candice Youngblood has received a $20,000 grant from Aerie to develop Youth on Root, a state-wide youth leadership program focusing on environmental health disparities. Youth on Root seeks to be a healing space and educational resource for high schoolers in low-income communities. The initiative was featured on Forbes magazine's website:

Lauren Richter, Alissa Cordner & Phil Brown, Sociological Perspectives Producing Ignorance Through Regulatory Structure: The Case of Per-and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Abstract:

... As Americans cast their ballots in next Tuesday’s election, voters have a choice: continued deregulation that could lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions, worsening symptoms of climate change and mass species die-offs or a reversal of those policies and slate of new governmental restrictions.

It is abundantly clear that climate change is not a future event; it is happening now, and it affects our lives, and our health. In a new report from The Yale Center on Climate Change and Health, Fellow Laura Bozzi and Robert Dubrow tracked 19 indicators on climate change and health in Connecticut across four broad categories — temperature, extreme events, infectious diseases, and air quality — and found disturbing trends in each.