A sustainable battery with a biodegradable electrolyte made from crab shells

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CELL PRESS

 

IMAGE: CRAB AND SHRIMP SHELLS ARE AN ABUNDANT SOURCE OF CHITIN view more 

CREDIT: LIANGBING HU

Accelerating demand for renewable energy and electric vehicles is sparking a high demand for the batteries that store generated energy and power engines. But the batteries behind these sustainability solutions aren’t always sustainable themselves. In a paper publishing September 1 in the journal Matter, scientists create a zinc battery with a biodegradable electrolyte from an unexpected source—crab shells.

“Vast quantities of batteries are being produced and consumed, raising the possibility of environmental problems,” says lead author Liangbing Hu, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Materials Innovation. “For example, polypropylene and polycarbonate separators, which are widely used in Lithium-ion batteries, take hundreds or thousands of years to degrade and add to environmental burden.”

Batteries use an electrolyte to shuttle ions back and forth between positively and negatively charged terminals. An electrolyte can be a liquid, paste, or gel, and many batteries use flammable or corrosive chemicals for this function. This new battery, which could store power from large-scale wind and solar sources, uses a gel electrolyte made from a biological material called chitosan.

“Chitosan is a derivative product of chitin. Chitin has a lot of sources, including the cell walls of fungi, the exoskeletons of crustaceans, and squid pens,” says Hu. “The most abundant source of chitosan is the exoskeletons of crustaceans, including crabs, shrimps and lobsters, which can be easily obtained from seafood waste. You can find it on your table.”

A biodegradable electrolyte means that about two thirds of the battery could be broken down by microbes—this chitosan electrolyte broke down completely within five months. This leaves behind the metal component, in this case zinc, rather than lead or lithium, which could be recycled.

“Zinc is more abundant in earth’s crust than lithium,” says Hu. “Generally speaking, well-developed zinc batteries are cheaper and safer.” This zinc and chitosan battery has an energy efficiency of 99.7% after 1000 battery cycles, making it a viable option for storing energy generated by wind and solar for transfer to power grids.

Hu and his team hope to continue working on making batteries even more environmentally friendly, including the manufacturing process. “In the future, I hope all components in batteries are biodegradable,” says Hu. “Not only the material itself but also the fabrication process of biomaterials.”

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This work was supported by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, Facebook Reality Labs Research, the University of Maryland A. James Clark School of Engineering and Maryland Nanocenter, and AIMLab.

Matter, Hu et al. “A sustainable chitosan-zinc electrolyte for high-rate zinc metal batteries” https://www.cell.com/matter/fulltext/S2590-2385(22)00414-3

Matter (@Matter_CP), published by Cell Press, is a new journal for multi-disciplinary, transformative materials sciences research. Papers explore scientific advancements across the spectrum of materials development—from fundamentals to application, from nano to macro. Visit: https://www.cell.com/matter. To receive Cell Press media alerts, please contact press@cell.com.

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JOURNAL

Matter

DOI

10.1016/j.matt.2022.07.015 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

A sustainable chitosan-zinc electrolyte for high-rate zinc metal batteries

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Sep-2022

Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAle

Social cost of carbon more than triple the current federal estimate, new study finds

A multi-year study of the social cost of carbon, a critical input for climate policy analysis, finds that every additional ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere costs society $185—far higher than the current federal estimate of $51 per ton.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

RESOURCES FOR THE FUTURE (RFF)

After years of robust modeling and analysis, a multi-institutional team led by researchers from Resources for the Future (RFF) and the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley), has released an updated social cost of carbon estimate that reflects new methodologies and key scientific advancements. The study, published today in the journal Nature, finds that each additional ton of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere costs society $185 per ton—3.6 times the current US federal estimate of $51 per ton.

The social cost of carbon is a critical metric that measures the economic damages, in dollars, that result from the emission of one additional ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. A high social cost of carbon can motivate more stringent climate policies, as it increases the estimated benefits of reducing greenhouse gases.

“Our estimate, which draws on recent advances in the scientific and economic literature, shows that we are vastly underestimating the harm of each additional ton of carbon dioxide that we release into the atmosphere,” said RFF President and CEO Richard G. Newell, who coauthored the peer-reviewed paper. “The implication is that the benefits of government policies and other actions that reduce global warming pollution are greater than has been assumed.”

The study, led by UC Berkeley Associate Professor David Anthoff and RFF Fellow Kevin Rennert, brought together leading researchers from institutions across the United States to develop important updates to social cost of carbon modeling. These advances include consideration of the probability of different socioeconomic and emissions trajectories far into the future; the incorporation of a modern representation of the climate system; and state-of-the-art scientific methodologies for assessing the effects of climate change on agriculture, temperature-related deaths, energy expenditures, and sea-level rise. The estimate also takes into account an updated approach to evaluating future climate risks through ‘discounting’ that is linked to future economic uncertainty. The $185-per-ton value is the central estimate of many that includes the inherent uncertainty in these trajectories.

Notably, the new Nature study is fully responsive to the methodological recommendations of a seminal 2017 National Academies report co-chaired by Newell and RFF’s Maureen Cropper. A federal interagency working group on the social costs of greenhouse gases, disbanded during the previous administration but reestablished by an executive order from President Biden, is also updating its social cost of carbon estimate using the 2017 recommendations.

“We hope that our research helps inform the anticipated updated social cost of carbon from the government’s interagency working group,” said Brian C. Prest, coauthor and director of RFF’s Social Cost of Carbon Initiative. “Decisions are only as strong as the science behind them. And our study finds that carbon dioxide emissions are more costly to society than many people likely realize.”

Aside from the estimate itself, a major output of the study is the Greenhouse Gas Impact Value Estimator (GIVE) model, an open-source software platform that allows users to replicate the team’s methodology or compute their own social cost of carbon estimates. Also released today is a new data tool, the Social Cost of Carbon Explorer, which demonstrates the working mechanics of the GIVE model and allows users to explore the data in detail.

“Our hope is that the freely available, open-source GIVE model we’re introducing today forms the foundation for continuous improvement of the estimates by an expanded community of scientists worldwide,” Rennert said. “A completely transparent methodology has been a guiding principle for our work, which is also directly relevant to other greenhouse gases, such as methane and nitrous oxides.”

Anthoff emphasized that the diverse expertise of the paper’s authors stems from the multi-faceted nature of the research. “Estimating the social cost of carbon requires inputs from many academic disciplines,” he said. “When we started this project, we knew that we would only succeed by assembling a team of leading researchers in each discipline to contribute their expertise. I am especially proud of the all-star group of researchers across so many leading institutions that jointly worked on this paper.”

For more, read the new paper, “Comprehensive Evidence Implies a Higher Social Cost of CO₂,” by Kevin Rennert (RFF), Frank Errickson (Princeton University), Brian C. Prest (RFF), Lisa Rennels (UC Berkeley), Richard G. Newell (RFF), Billy Pizer (RFF), Cora Kingdon (UC Berkeley), Jordan Wingenroth (RFF), Roger Cooke (RFF), Bryan Parthum (US Environmental Protection Agency), David Smith (US Environmental Protection Agency), Kevin Cromar (New York University), Delavane Diaz (EPRI), Frances C. Moore (University of California, Davis), Ulrich K. Müller (Princeton University), Richard J. Plevin, Adrian E. Raftery (University of Washington), Hana Ševčíková (University of Washington), Hannah Sheets (Rochester Institute of Technology), James H. Stock (Harvard University), Tammy Tan (US Environmental Protection Agency), Mark Watson (Princeton University), Tony E. Wong (Rochester Institute of Technology), and David Anthoff (UC Berkeley).

For more information on the paper, read the related blog post, “The Social Cost of Carbon: Reaching a New Estimate.”

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JOURNAL

Nature

DOI

10.1038/s41586-022-05224-9 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Computational simulation/modeling

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Comprehensive evidence implies a higher social cost of CO2

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Sep-2022

COI STATEMENT

N/A

How ‘prediction markets’ could improve climate risk policies and investment decisions

A market-led approach could be key to guiding policy, research and business decisions about future climate risks, a new study outlines

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

A market-led approach could be key to guiding policy, research and business decisions about future climate risks, a new study outlines.

Published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the paper from academics at the Universities of Lancaster and Exeter details how expert ‘prediction markets’ could improve the climate-risk forecasts that guide key business and regulatory decisions.

Organisations now appreciate that they have to consider climate risks within their strategic plans – whether that relates to physical risks to buildings and sites, or risks associated with transitioning to achieve net zero.

However, the forward-looking information needed to inform these strategic decisions is limited, the researchers say.

Dr Kim Kaivanto, a co-author from Lancaster University’s Department of Economics, said: “The institutional arrangements under which climate-risk information is currently provided mirrors the incentive problems and conflicts of interest that prevailed in the credit-rating industry prior to the 2007/8 financial crisis.

 “In order to make sense of emissions scenarios and to support planning and decision-making, organisations have a pressing need for this type of forward-looking expert risk information.

“Understanding climate risks requires diverse and complementary expertise from political science, economics and policy, as well as country-specific knowledge on the major emitters. Prediction markets incentivise and reward participants with distinct expertise and information to come forward – and they offer a level playing field for experts from these complementary fields of expertise.”

Mark Roulston, one of the Exeter University co-authors said, “If providers of climate forecasts are paid upfront irrespective of accuracy, you don’t need to be an economist to spot the problem with that arrangement.”

In their paper, ‘Prediction-market innovations can improve climate-risk forecasts’ the authors detail how expert ‘prediction markets’ can help overcome the structural problems and shortfalls in the provision of forward-looking climate-risk information – something that will become more vital as the demand for long-range climate information increases.

Prediction markets are designed to incentivise those with important information to come forward, and facilitate the aggregation of information through the buying and selling of contracts that yield a fixed payoff if the specified event occurs. An outcome of interest – such as average CO2 concentration in the year 2040, for example – is partitioned into intervals. Expert participants compare the results of their own modelling with the prices of these intervals, and purchase or sell claims on these intervals if their model suggests the price is too low or too high.

With a well-designed market such as Lancaster University’s AGORA prediction-market platform, the price of a contract can be interpreted as the market-based probability of the event happening.

These kinds of long-range markets have not been established to date due, in part, to regulatory obstacles. However, the researchers believe the markets can be designed to overcome these obstacles by avoiding the ‘pay-to-play’ aspect of existing prediction markets in which the losses of less-well-informed individuals fund the winnings of better-informed individuals. Instead, markets can be structured as vehicles for distributing research funding to experts and modellers in a manner that is consistent with the principles of effective altruism: an initial stake provided by a sponsor is distributed to participants in accordance with the quality and quantity of information they bring into the market through their trading activity.

They add that access to participation in the markets would need to have selection criteria to ensure diversity of views and a range of expertise to ensure they are able to aggregate diverse sources of information.

The paper’s authors are Kim Kaivanto of Lancaster University, and Mark Roulston, Todd Kaplan and Brett Day of the University of Exeter.

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-022-01467-6 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Prediction-market innovations can improve climate-risk forecasts

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Sep-2022

Will Paris succeed? Research assesses if governments will make pledges a reality

UC San Diego School of Global Policy and Strategy finds that American credibility on climate change is lagging behind other regions, especially Europe

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN DIEGO

 

IMAGE: SURVEYS WHERE RESPONDENTS WERE ASKED TO RATE THEIR HOME COUNTRY WERE CATEGORIZED BY CONTINENT TO ELICIT THE MOST CANDID RESPONSES POSSIBLE. IN THIS ANALYSIS, EXPERTS FROM NORTH AMERICAN COUNTRIES WERE THE MOST PESSIMISTIC ABOUT THEIR PLEDGES, BOTH IN THEIR DRIVE AND ABILITY TO ACHIEVE CLIMATE GOALS IN THE AGREEMENT. view more 

CREDIT: UC SAN DIEGO'S SCHOOL OF GLOBAL POLICY AND STRATEGY

Much of the world’s efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change hinge on the success of the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement. A new Nature Climate Change study is the first to provide scientific evidence assessing how effective governments will be at implementing their commitments to the agreement that will reduce CO2 emissions causing climate change.  

The research reveals that the countries with the boldest pledges are also the most likely to achieve their goals. Europe takes the lead with the strongest commitments that are also the most credible; however, findings suggest the U.S., despite having a less ambitious commitment under Paris, is not expected to meet its pledges. 

The study from the University of California San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy integrates a novel sample of registrants of the Conference of Parties (COP), consisting of more than 800 diplomatic and scientific experts who, for decades, have participated in climate policy debates. This expert group was important to survey because they are the people “in the room” when key policy decisions are made and therefore in a unique position to evaluate what their countries and other countries are likely to achieve. 

They were asked to rate member nations—their own country included—to gauge pledge ambition, which is how much each country has pledged to do to mitigate global warming, in comparison to what they feasibly could do, given their economic strength, to avert a climate crisis. They also were asked to evaluate the degree to which nations have pledges that are credible.  

“The pledges outlined in the accords are legally non-binding, thus the success of the agreement centers around confidence in the system that when governments make promises, they are going to live up those promises,” said the study’s lead author David Victor, professor of industrial innovation at UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy and co-director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative.

Victor added, “Our results indicate that the framework of the agreement is working pretty well. The Paris Agreement is getting countries to make ambitious pledges; last year nearly all countries updated those pledges and made them even more ambitious. What’s needed next is better systems for checking to see whether countries are actually delivering what they promise.”

A subset of survey responses from eight countries plus the EU were selected for being most relevant to climate mitigation policy. They rate Europe’s goals as the most ambitious and credible. Europe is followed by China, Australia, South Africa and India. The U.S. and Brazil come in last place in the credibility category and second to last, after Saudi Arabia, in terms of ambition.

Surveys where respondents were asked to rate their home country were categorized by continent to elicit the most candid responses possible. In this analysis, experts from North American countries were the most pessimistic about their pledges, both in their drive and ability to achieve climate goals in the agreement.

CAPTION

A subset of survey responses from eight countries plus the EU were selected for being most relevant to climate mitigation policy. They rate Europe’s goals as the most ambitious and credible. Europe is followed by China, Australia, South Africa and India. The U.S. and Brazil come in last place in the credibility category and second to last, after Saudi Arabia, in terms of ambition.

CREDIT

UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy

Study data incorporates judgement, intuition and experience of climate policy experts

“The benefit of this data set is that diplomatic and scientific experts have the best working knowledge about political and administrative realities of their home country,” Victor said. “It is difficult to get empirical information on national laws and regulations and climate change policy in particular is highly complex. To truly gauge the success of the Paris Agreement, you need to incorporate the judgement, intuition and expertise from those with real-world experience negotiating these policies.”

He added, “from all the responses, it’s clear the U.S. is clearly in trouble—even with the recent Inflation Reduction Act being signed into law, which happened after our study ended. While the legislation is a big step in the right direction, it doesn’t deliver the same investment many other counties have already committed. I think the major questions our study raises are ‘how does the U.S. boost its credibility’ and ‘why is credibility a problem.’”

Victor, also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and co-authors did a statistical analysis of the data set and found nations with more stable governments are more likely to have bold pledges that are highly credible.  

The authors find China and other non-democracies are expected to comply with their pledges not simply because many of them have less ambitious pledges, but because they also have administrative and political systems that make it easier to implement complex national policies needed to align their countries with international commitments. In addition, China is on track to achieve its goals due to the country’s economic downturn.

The rationale that leading policy experts cite for why their countries are making and honoring their pledges varies a lot. For the wealthier countries, the key rationale is climate change. For most of the rest of the world—including the developing countries that are most vulnerable to climate change—experts cite the need to address air pollution and opportunities to grow their economies through climate action as a major driver. 

The UC San Diego contribution to this study is part of the university’s Deep Decarbonization Initiative. The other authors on the paper are Marcel Lumkowsky and Astrid Dannenberg, both of the University of Kassel. Dannenberg is also affiliated with the University of Gothenburg

The study “Determining the credibility of commitments in international climate policy” published in Nature Climate Change, can be found on this link. 

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JOURNAL

Nature Climate Change

DOI

10.1038/s41558-022-01454-x 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Determining the credibility of commitments in international climate policy

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Sep-2022

New approach predicts disease transmission among wildlife and humans

Using machine learning, researchers can forecast outbreaks of pathogens such as coronavirus and monkeypox

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA

TAMPA, Fla. (Sept. 1, 2022) – The rate that emerging wildlife diseases infect humans has steadily increased over the last three decades. Viruses, such as the global coronavirus pandemic and recent monkeypox outbreak, have heightened the urgent need for disease ecology tools to forecast when and where disease outbreaks are likely.

A University of South Florida assistant professor helped develop a methodology that will do just that – predict disease transmission from wildlife to humans, from one wildlife species to another and determine who is at risk of infection.

The methodology is a machine-learning approach that identifies the influence of variables, such as location and climate, on known pathogens. Using only small amounts of information, the system is able to identify community hot spots at risk of infection on both global and local scales.

“Our main goal is to develop this tool for preventive measures,” said co-principal investigator Diego Santiago-Alarcon, a USF assistant professor of integrative biology. “It’s difficult to have an all-purpose methodology that can be used to predict infections across all the diverse parasite systems, but with this research, we contribute to achieving that goal.”

With help from researchers at the Universiad Veracruzana and Instituto de Ecologia, located in Mexico, Santiago-Alarcon examined three host-pathogen systems – avian malaria, birds with West Nile virus and bats with coronavirus – to test the reliability and accuracy of the models generated by the methodology.

The team found that for the three systems, the species most frequently infected was not necessarily the most susceptible to the disease. To better pinpoint hosts with higher risk of infection, it was important to identify relevant factors, such as climate and evolutionary relationships.

By integrating geographic, environmental and evolutionary development variables, the researchers identified host species that have previously not been recorded as infected by the parasite under study, providing a way to identify susceptible species and eventually mitigate pathogen risk.

“We feel confident that the methodology is successful, and it can be applied widely to many host-pathogen systems,” Santiago-Alarcon said. “We now enter into a phase of improvement and refinement.”

The results, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, prove the methodology is able to provide reliable global predictions for the studied host–pathogen systems, even when using a small amount of information. This new approach will help direct infectious disease surveillance and field efforts, providing a cost-effective strategy to better determine where to invest limited disease resources.

Predicting what kind of pathogen will produce the next medical or veterinary infection is challenging, but necessary. As the rate of human impact on natural environments increases, opportunity for novel diseases will continue to rise.

“Humanity, and indeed biodiversity in general, are experiencing more and more infectious disease challenges as a result of our incursion and destruction of the natural order worldwide through things like deforestation, global trade and climate change,” said Andrés Lira-Noriega, research fellow at the Instituto de Ecologia. “This imposes the need of having tools like the one we are publishing to help us predict where new threats in terms of new pathogens and their reservoirs may occur or arise.”

The team plans to continue their research to further test the methodology on additional host-pathogen systems and extend the study of disease transmission to predict future outbreaks. The goal is to make the tool easily accessible through an app for the scientific community by the end of 2022.

About the University of South Florida

The University of South Florida, a high-impact global research university dedicated to student success, generates an annual economic impact of more than $6 billion. Over the past 10 years, no other public university in the country has risen faster in U.S. News and World Report’s national university rankings than USF. Serving more than 50,000 students on campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee, USF is designated as a Preeminent State Research University by the Florida Board of Governors, placing it in the most elite category among the state’s 12 public universities. USF has earned widespread national recognition for its success graduating under-represented minority and limited-income students at rates equal to or higher than white and higher income students. USF is a member of the American Athletic Conference. Learn more at www.usf.edu.

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2122851119 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Wildlife susceptibility to infectious diseases at global scales

Individual risk-factor data could help predict the next Ebola outbreak, new study shows

Researchers confirm a relationship between social, economic and demographic factors and the propensity for individuals to engage in behaviors that expose them to Ebola spillover

Peer-Reviewed Publication

LEHIGH UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: JAVIER BUCETA (FRONT LEFT), A FACULTY MEMBER AT THE INSTITUTE FOR INTEGRATIVE SYSTEMS BIOLOGY, AND PAOLO BOCCHINI (FRONT RIGHT), PROFESSOR OF CIVIL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING AT LEHIGH UNIVERSITY. view more 

CREDIT: STEPHANIE VETO/LEHIGH UNIVERSITY

Several years ago, a team of scientists at Lehigh University developed a predictive model to accurately forecast Ebola outbreaks based on climate-driven bat migration. Ebola is a serious and sometimes-deadly infectious disease that is zoonotic, or enters a human population via interaction with animals. It is widely believed that the source of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which killed more than 11,000 people, was human interaction with bats.

Now members of the team have examined how social and economic factors, such as level of education and general knowledge of Ebola, might contribute to “high-risk behaviors” that may bring individuals into contact with potentially infected animals. A focus on geographical locations with high concentrations of individuals at high-risk could help public health officials better target prevention and education resources.  

“We created a survey that combined the collection of social, demographic and economic data with questions related to general knowledge of Ebola transmission and potentially high-risk behaviors,” says Paolo Bocchini, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Lehigh and one of the study’s leaders. “Our results show that it is indeed possible to calibrate a model to predict, with a reasonable level of accuracy, the propensity of an individual to engage in high-risk behaviors.”

For example, the team’s data and analyses suggested Kailahun, a town in Eastern Sierra Leone, and Kambia in the northern part of the country, as the rural districts in the country with the highest likelihood of infection spillover, based on individual risk factors accurately identifying the location, Kailahun, where the 2014 Ebola epidemic is believed to have originated.

The results are detailed in a paper “Estimation of Ebola’s spillover infection exposure in Sierra Leone based on sociodemographic and economic factors” which will soon be published in PLOS ONE. Additional authors include: Lehigh University graduate student Sena Mursel, undergraduates Nathaniel Alter, Lindsay Slavit and Anna Smith; and Javier Buceta, a faculty member at the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology in Valencia, Spain.

Among the findings: young adults (ages between 18-34) and adults (ages between 34 - 50) were most at risk in the population they studied. This group constituted 77% of the investigated sample, but 86% of the respondents were at risk. In addition, those with agricultural jobs were among the most at risk: 50% of the study respondents have an agriculture-related occupation, but represent 79% of respondents at risk

“We confirmed a relationship between social, economic and demographic factors and the propensity for individuals to engage in behaviors that expose them to Ebola spillover,” says Bocchini. “We also calibrated a preliminary model that quantifies this relationship.”

The authors say these results point to the need for a holistic approach for any model seeking to accurately predict disease outbreaks. Their findings may also be useful for population health officials, who may be able to use such models to better focus scarce resources.

“One has to look at the big picture,” says Bocchini. “We collected satellite images that showed the evolution of enviro-climatic data and combined them with ecological models and random field models to capture the spatial and temporal fluctuations of natural resources and the resulting continent-wide migrations of infected animal carriers. We also studied the human population’s social, economic, demographic and behavioral characteristics, integrating everything to obtain our predictions.”

“Only this broad perspective and interdisciplinary approach can truly capture these dynamics, and with this line of research we are proving that it works,” adds Bocchini.

“In the end, the conclusions of our study are not that surprising: greater economic means, more education, and access to information are key factors to reduce health-related high-risk behaviors” said Buceta. “Indeed, some of these factors have been related with what is known as the ‘health poverty trap.’ Our study and methodology show how quantitative analyses concerning individual, rather than aggregated, data can be used to identify these factors.”   

To collect data for their study, Bocchini and Buceta traveled to Sierra Leone with a delegation of undergraduate students from Lehigh with support from the National Institutes of Health, Lehigh’s Office of Creative Inquiry and in collaboration with nonprofit World Hope International. The assistance of two local translators was critical to the team’s success in administering their survey door-to-door. The students who worked on the project were part of Lehigh’s Global Social Impact Fellowship program which engages undergraduate and graduate students in work focused on addressing sustainable development challenges in low- and middle-income countries. 

“This is precisely the kind of ambitious interdisciplinary project with tremendous potential for social impact that we want Lehigh students to engage with through the Global Social Impact Fellowship,” says Khanjan Mehta, Vice Provost for Creative Inquiry at Lehigh. “Students from various disciplines across Lehigh had the opportunity to contribute to this work under Dr. Bocchini and Dr. Buceta’s leadership.”

The team’s promising results are a strong argument for broader data collection and they are in conversations with Statistics Sierra Leone, the country’s census bureau, to perform a nationwide version of their study.

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JOURNAL

PLoS ONE

DOI

10.1371/journal.pone.0271886 

ARTICLE TITLE

Estimation of Ebola's spillover infection exposure in Sierra Leone based on sociodemographic and economic factors

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Sep-2022

Recent advances in air quality research

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY

A deep breath of fresh air can feel restorative. However, if the air is polluted by airborne particles or volatile compounds, then breathing it in can be an unpleasant, or potentially harmful, experience. Below are some recent papers published in ACS journals that report insights into the sources and potential exposure risks of particulate matter and gases that affect air quality indoors and outdoors. Reporters can request free access to these papers by emailing newsroom@acs.org.

“Plastic Burning Impacts on Atmospheric Fine Particulate Matter at Urban and Rural Sites in the USA and Bangladesh”
ACS Environmental Au
June 9, 2022
Burning garbage, particularly plastic waste, releases particulate matter and toxic gases into the air. Here, researchers measured a molecular tracer for burned plastic in airborne particles collected at urban and rural locations in the U.S. and Bangladesh. They found that plastic burning was a minor source of particulate matter in the U.S., but in Dhaka, Bangladesh, the country’s capital, it contributed up to 15% of the particulate matter.

“Gas- and Particle-Phase Amide Emissions from Cooking: Mechanisms and Air Quality Impacts”
Environmental Science & Technology
June 7, 2022
In this study, researchers conducted lab experiments to investigate the compounds released by the high-temperature cooking of meats in oil. They heated amino acids, the building blocks of meat proteins, and different oils at 347 to 419 F. They found that amides, including some that are harmful to humans, were in both vapors and airborne particles. This food preparation method could contribute to poorer indoor and outdoor air quality and potential health risks if inhaled, the researchers say.

“Molecular Characterization of Organosulfate-Dominated Aerosols over Agricultural Fields from the Southern Great Plains by High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry”
ACS Earth and Space Chemistry
May 10, 2022
Here, researchers examined the molecular composition of aerosols — extremely small droplets — above crop fields, using high-resolution mass spectrometry. The aerosol composition followed diurnal cycles and was strongly affected by the wind’s direction, which episodically brought in urban emissions. The researchers say these results could have implications for local weather patterns, crop growth and human health.

The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a nonprofit organization chartered by the U.S. Congress. ACS’ mission is to advance the broader chemistry enterprise and its practitioners for the benefit of Earth and all its people. The Society is a global leader in promoting excellence in science education and providing access to chemistry-related information and research through its multiple research solutions, peer-reviewed journals, scientific conferences, eBooks and weekly news periodical Chemical & Engineering News. ACS journals are among the most cited, most trusted and most read within the scientific literature; however, ACS itself does not conduct chemical research. As a leader in scientific information solutions, its CAS division partners with global innovators to accelerate breakthroughs by curating, connecting and analyzing the world’s scientific knowledge. ACS’ main offices are in Washington, D.C., and Columbus, Ohio.

To automatically receive news releases from the American Chemical Society, contact newsroom@acs.org.

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Study of people exposed to air pollution reveals greater effects on females than males

Reports and Proceedings

EUROPEAN LUNG FOUNDATION

 NEWS RELEASE 1-SEP-2022

The impact of breathing diesel exhaust fumes may be more severe for females than males, according to new research that will be presented at the European Respiratory Society International Congress in Barcelona, Spain [1].

Researchers looked for changes in people’s blood brought about by exposure to diesel exhaust. In both females and males, they found changes in components of the blood related to inflammation, infection and cardiovascular disease, but they found more changes in females than males.

The research was presented by Dr Hemshekhar Mahadevappa, from the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada and was a collaboration between two research groups led by Professor Neeloffer Mookherjee at the University of Manitoba and Professor Chris Carlsten at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Dr Mahadevappa told the Congress: “We already know that there are sex differences in lung diseases such as asthma and respiratory infections. Our previous research showed that breathing diesel exhaust creates inflammation in the lungs and has an impact on how the body deals with respiratory infections. In this study, we wanted to look for any effects in the blood and how these differ in females and males.”

The study involved ten volunteers, five female and five male, who were all healthy non-smokers. Each volunteer spent four hours breathing filtered air and four hours breathing air containing diesel exhaust fumes at three different concentrations – 20, 50 and 150 micrograms of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) per cubic metre – with a four-week break in between each exposure. The current European Union annual limit value for PM2.5 is 25 micrograms per cubic metre, but much higher peaks are common in many cities.

Volunteers donated blood samples 24 hours after each exposure and the researchers made detailed examinations of the volunteers’ blood plasma. Plasma is the liquid component of the blood that carries blood cells as well as hundreds of proteins and other molecules around the body. Using a well-established analysis technology called liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry, the researchers looked for changes in the levels of different proteins following exposure to diesel exhaust and compared the changes in females and males.

Comparing the plasma samples, the researchers found levels of 90 proteins that were distinctly different between female and male volunteers following exposure to diesel exhaust. Among the proteins that differed between females and males, were some that are known to play a role in inflammation, damage repair, blood clotting, cardiovascular disease and the immune system. Some of these differences became clearer when volunteers were exposed to the higher levels of diesel exhaust.

Professor Mookherjee explained: “These are preliminary findings, however they show that exposure to diesel exhaust has different effects in female bodies compared to male and that could indicate that air pollution is more dangerous for females than males.

“This is important as respiratory diseases such as asthma are known to effect females and males differently, with females more likely to suffer severe asthma that does not respond to treatments. Therefore, we need to know a lot more about how females and males respond to air pollution and what this means for preventing, diagnosing and treating their respiratory disease.”

The researchers plan to continue studying the functions of these proteins to better understand their role in the difference between female and male immune responses.

Professor Zorana Andersen from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark, is Chair of the European Respiratory Society Environment and Health Committee and was not involved in the research. She said: “We know that exposure to air pollution, especially diesel exhaust, is a major risk factor in diseases such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. There is very little we can do as individuals to avoid beathing polluted air, so we need governments to set and enforce limits on air pollutants.

“We also need to understand how and why air pollution contributes to poor health. This study offers some important insight into how the body reacts to diesel exhaust and how that may differ between females and males.”

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