La présentation aborde une étude et une analyse approfondie de la littérature qui visent à déterminer les moments les plus critiques pour minimiser les impacts sur la santé lors d'une évacuation due aux feux de forêt. Pour ce faire, douze intervenants d'une région socio-sanitaire touchée par les incendies ont été interrogés au moyen d'entrevues semi-dirigées. L'analyse de ces entrevues a permis de mettre en évidence des moments charnières ayant un impact significatif, positif ou négatif, sur la santé. Ces quatre moments clés, comprenant la communication de l’ordre d'évacuation, le transport adapté, l'hébergement durant les évacuations et la phase de rétablissement, se révèlent être ceux nécessitant une attention particulière. Les résultats de cette étude exploratoire ont été confrontés à ceux d'une analyse thématique portant sur les mêmes sujets. La présentation proposera ainsi une réflexion critique sur les défis, les impacts sur la santé et les…
Le CCNSE offre régulièrement des présentations dans le cadre d’activités liées au secteur de la santé environnementale tenues partout au Canada, et il organise des ateliers ainsi que des réunions sur divers sujets. Vous trouverez ici une liste de certaines présentations faites dans le cadre de conférences et de webinaires d’organismes externes, en plus de présentations tirées de notre Série de séminaires sur la santé environnementale.
Images of communities and homes destroyed or damaged following extreme weather events are increasingly familiar. But after the cameras leave, a less visible, longer-term toll can settle in on the mental and physical well-being of those who have suffered great loss. That suffering can linger for years. This talk will quantify these often less considered impacts that follow in the aftermath of large scale flooding, with results that are equally applicable to forest fire-related loss. On the upside, much work has been done over the past few years to prepare for extreme weather. Accordingly, the discussion will end by highlighting practical and cost-effective actions that can be taken today, to avoid suffering tomorrow.
Dr. Blair Feltmate, Head of the Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo
CO2 monitoring is an established tool to assess occupancy and ventilation requirements for indoor spaces, typically for the purposes of increasing energy efficiency. During the pandemic, it is critical that spaces are adequately ventilated for the number of occupants and type of activities, but it is often unclear if ventilation objectives are being met. CO2 monitoring can help to address ventilation inadequacy, provided that users are able to install, monitor, interpret, and react to these devices. However, there are a number of technical and risk communication challenges regarding CO2 monitoring by non-expert occupants, including the tendency to misinterpret CO2 as a direct indicator of COVID-19 risk. This webinar will review some of the public health commentary or guidance on CO2 monitoring during the pandemic, and will identify the more challenging aspects of this practice to help facilitate decision-making and communication around CO2 sensors.
Almost two years since the start of the pandemic, significant psychosocial impacts are still observed in the Canadian population. The results of various surveys, as part of a study carried out by Université of Sherbrooke with the collaboration of international universities, have depicted the association between various risk/protective factors and mental health in times of pandemic. The most recent survey was conducted in October 2021 (in Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland) among a large and representative sample of adults. Special attention will be paid to the evolution in anxiety and depression and its associated risk/protective factors, as well as to a newly explored concept called “pandemic fatigue”. In addition to these results, some interesting comparisons between the attitudes, perceptions and responses towards the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change will be made. Lessons in disaster risk management learned over the past two years can indeed be utilized to enhance risk…
The risk of contracting coronavirus varies among people and places, making some British Columbians more likely to be exposed to COVID-19 than others, due to socio-economic factors, occupational hazards, personal behaviours or other factors that are amplified in places characterised by increased risk of transmission. To better understand this, we developed a vulnerability model to identify differences in COVID-19 risks across neighbourhoods, visualized in a series of maps on a public-facing dashboard that indicate where to focus policy and public health efforts. In this presentation we discuss how we worked with patient partners and some of the actions that have been informed by our maps.Dr. Valorie Crooks, Professor, Simon Fraser UniversityLeah Rosenkrantz, EH & KT Scientist, NCCEH
In the past decade, climate change-exacerbated landscape disturbances such as wildfires and floods have threatened water security by altering not only water availability, but also source water quality and consequently treatability. An international panel convened by the Canadian Water Network and the Water Research Foundation in 2014 concluded that sole reliance on in-plant treatment technologies for mitigating such risks is inadequate.
Algae blooms—especially cyanobacteria—pose some of the greatest associated challenges to drinking water treatment. Cyanobacteria blooms can reduce drinking water treatment process efficiency, leading to service disruptions, inability to meet community demands, and even outages. Moreover, they can produce toxins that expensive advanced treatment not found in most conventional treatment plants.
Traditional source water protection approaches are alarmingly inadequate for managing these threats, especially in a changing climate. These…
There is increasing evidence that long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) may adversely impact cognitive performance. Wildfire smoke is one of the largest sources of PM2.5 today and concentrations are likely to increase under climate change. However, little is known about how short-term exposure impacts cognitive function. We aimed to evaluate the associations between daily and hourly exposure to PM2.5 and wildfire smoke and cognitive performance in adults. Scores from 20 plays of an attention-oriented brain-training game were obtained for 10,228 adults in the United States (US). We estimated daily and hourly PM2.5 exposure through a data fusion of observations from multiple monitoring networks. Daily smoke exposure in the western US was obtained from satellite-derived estimates of smoke plume density. We used a longitudinal repeated measures design with linear mixed effects models to test for associations between short-term exposure and attention score. Results were…
Urban rats are an important issue globally. Despite ongoing efforts to manage rats, they continue to flourish in cities, indicating that municipalities have not been able to find or widely implement solutions that sustainably eliminate rats. There is no consensus why management efforts may have failed and there is limited research describing or comparing municipal rat management approaches.
This webinar will present a project designed to understand the state of municipal rat management with a view towards providing recommendations for cities seeking to develop or improve their own rat management strategies. To achieve this, our research team traveled to seven cities in the USA with municipal rat management programs, interviewed program stakeholders, attended site visits, gathered rat-related municipal regulations, and synthesized the municipal rat management literature. Overall, we found an entrenched “war-on-rats” paradigm driving municipal rat management and dictating…
The NCCEH Environmental Health Seminar Series provides an opportunity for learning and knowledge exchange on a variety of environmental health topics. The seminars can be attended in-person or online.
The transmission of COVID-19, which occurs primarily through close contact with an infected person, has made it necessary for large proportions of the world’s population to self-isolate in their homes. However, those dwelling in multi-unit residential buildings (MURBs) face additional challenges as they must necessarily use and share common areas and facilities, and are dependent upon building managers to maintain good indoor environmental quality (IEQ). Based on a recent NCCEH publication, this webinar will look at some of the evidence on COVID-19 transmission and consider how this applies to transmission risk in MURBs. We will discuss current cleaning and sanitation guidance from the Public Health Agency of Canada and other public health agencies.
Dr. Angela…