Air pollution high at US public schools with kids from marginalized groups

New study finds disparities in exposure by region, across the rural/urban divide and between economic and racial or ethnic makeup of students

Peer-Reviewed Publication

AMERICAN GEOPHYSICAL UNION

American Geophysical Union
17 November 2022
AGU Release No. 22-67
For Immediate Release 

 This press release and accompanying multimedia are available online at:  https://news.agu.org/press-release/air-pollution-high-at-us-public-schools-with-marginalized-kids

WASHINGTON — Race- and ethnicity-based discrepancies in exposure to air pollution, especially regarding proximity to roadways and industrial zones, are well-established. A new study reports the first nationwide patterns in atmospheric fine particulate pollution and nitrogen dioxide exposure at U.S. public schools.

On both national and local scales, schools with more students of color and students who receive free or reduced-price lunches, a proxy for poverty, are located in areas with higher concentrations of the pollutants, the study found. The study, led by members of NASA’s Health and Air Quality Applied Science team, was published in GeoHealth, AGU’s journal for research that investigates the intersection of human and planetary health for a sustainable future. 

The study analyzed the distribution of two pollutants, particulate matter of 2.5 microns in diameter and smaller (PM2.5) and nitrogen dioxide, and compared pollutants to students’ racial or ethnic identity and income status. PM2.5 can cause short-term irritation and exacerbate chronic conditions such as asthma and heart disease. Nitrogen dioxide can also cause irritation and either bring about or worsen respiratory conditions. Long-term exposure to both pollutants can result in increased risk of hospitalization or death.

“School kids are a really vulnerable population,” said Michael Cheeseman, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University and lead author of the new study. “They’re really sensitive to air pollution, and they spend a lot of their time at school.”

In the U.S., children spend an average of nearly 7 hours per day at school for 180 days of the year. School-aged children are also still developing, and studies have found exposure to air pollution may hurt children’s health, including their brain development, lung health, and ability to learn, Cheeseman said.

The study used existing datasets* of student populations across the continental U.S. and satellite-derived concentrations of the pollutants from 2017 through 2019, with pollutant estimations verified by established EPA monitoring networks. One of the pollutant models explicitly accounts for nitrogen dioxide derived from traffic, which is especially relevant for low-income schools because they tend to be located near busy roadways. The pollutants reflect ambient air pollution, not air pollution inside school buildings.

“The biggest takeaway is that schools with higher proportions of students in racial or ethnic minorities, or that have higher poverty levels, tend to be associated with higher concentrations of PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide,” Cheeseman said. “These disparities exist from the national and state level even to local levels, with discrepancies and segregation within one city.”

Regional differences in exposure

Schools with higher proportions of minority students had about 30% higher peak concentrations of both nitrogen dioxide and PM2.5. The highest concentrations of nitrogen dioxide and PM2.5 are at schools where more than 80% of students are eligible for free or reduced lunch. The findings are consistent with previous studies that examined pollution and schools at smaller scales, such as school districts.

The researchers examined how air pollution discrepancies varied between states and between urban and rural areas. To link pollution to population discrepancies, they considered how race/ethnicity and poverty varied by state and urbanicity. Urban schools experienced higher concentrations of nitrogen dioxide, likely due to proximity to high-traffic roads. Rural schools often had low nitrogen dioxide pollution, likely due to a lack of development, but PM2.5 exposure did not change much between rural and urban settings.

Regional differences in race and pollution exist. For example, in states in the South, schools tended to be more rural and have more Black and African American students, so students at those schools are exposed to less nitrogen dioxide.

Because PM2.5 has a longer lifespan in the atmosphere, it is more widely distributed and is therefore “smoothed out” over space and time, Cheeseman said, which could explain why stronger discrepancies exist for nitrogen dioxide than particulate pollution.

The factors included in the study — race or ethnicity, poverty and population density — are often related and influence each other. For instance, schools with higher proportions of racial or ethnic minorities tend to be in urban areas and have higher rates of poverty.

Although the EPA provides non-mandatory guidance on how to choose an appropriate location for a new school, there are currently no mandatory federal guidelines that protect students from attending schools in heavily polluted areas, the authors said.

“I do think more attention should be paid to this,” said Cheeseman. “Placing a new school is probably a balancing act too, though. If you place schools in less polluted areas that are maybe farther out, students might need to commute through heavily trafficked areas longer, and they could be exposed to more pollution from traffic that way.”

# # #

AGU (www.agu.org) is a global community supporting more than half a million advocates and professionals in Earth and space sciences. Through broad and inclusive partnerships, we advance discovery and solution science that accelerate knowledge and create solutions that are ethical, unbiased and respectful of communities and their values. Our programs include serving as a scholarly publisher, convening virtual and in-person events and providing career support. We live our values in everything we do, such as our net zero energy renovated building in Washington, D.C. and our Ethics and Equity Center, which fosters a diverse and inclusive geoscience community to ensure responsible conduct.  

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Notes for Journalists:

GeoHealth is an open access journal. Download a PDF copy of the paper here. Neither the paper nor this press release is under embargo.

Paper title:

“Disparities in air pollutants across racial, ethnic, and poverty groups at US public schools”

Authors:

• Michael Cheeseman (corresponding author), Bonne Ford, Emily V. Fischer, Jeffrey R. Pierce, Department of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University, CO, USA
• Susan Anenberg, George Washington University, Milken Institute School of Public Health, Washington, District  of Columbia, USA
• Matthew J. Cooper, Air Emission Priorities Division, Environment Climate Change Canada, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada
• Melanie S. Hammer, Randall V. Martin, Aaron van Donkelaar, Washington University in St. Louis, Department of Energy, Environmental, and Chemical Engineering, St. Louis, MO, USA
• Sheryl Magzamen, Colorado State University, Department of Environmental and Radiological Health Sciences, Fort Collins, CO, USA
• John Volckens, Colorado State University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Fort Collins, CO, USA

*Sources for the data:
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.est.8b06392

https://www.essoar.org/doi/10.1002/essoar.10506660.1

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aba3a5

Recent related papers from AGU:

"Barking up the Right Tree: Using Tree Bark to Track Airborne Particles in School Environment and Link Science to Society"

"Mediating Role of Fine Particles Abatement on Pediatric Respiratory Health During COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Order in San Diego County, California"

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JOURNAL

GeoHealth

DOI

10.1029/2022GH000672 

ARTICLE TITLE

Disparities in air pollutants across racial, ethnic, and poverty groups at US public schools

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

16-Nov-2022

*Free* Current climate mitigation finance flows are inadequate and unfair

Reports and Proceedings

AMERICAN ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE (AAAS)

In a Policy Forum, Shonali Pachauri and colleagues argue that current global climate mitigation investments are inadequate and unfair. According to Pachauri et al., rapid and substantial investments in climate mitigation within this decade are needed in order to meet the ambitious goals of the Paris Agreement. However, many political and financial barriers continue to hinder progress toward this end. “Clear institutional and regulatory frameworks are needed to mobilize the magnitude of climate finance required to achieve globally agreed climate targets,” write the authors. “Agreement on how to redirect international and domestic finance towards urgent near-term mitigation investments and climate adaptation efforts will be critical to the success of negotiations at the COP27.” Although global mitigation investment pathways modeled in the sixth assessment report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reach global climate goals in a cost-effective manner, it fails to provide any helpful insight into who should finance these investments or how to allocate the costs and benefits of mitigation efforts in a fair and just way. Using global economic data and equity considerations, Pachauri et al. re-evaluate global cost-effective mitigation investments and identify “fair-share” regional contributions that better describe the direction and magnitude of financial flows needed to meet current mitigation plans equitably. They found that, under most equity considerations, investments from North America and Europe to other regions will need to substantially increase relative to present levels to meet the Paris Agreement goals.

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JOURNAL

Science

DOI

10.1126/science.adf0067 

ARTICLE TITLE

Fairness considerations in contributions to near-term global mitigation investments needs

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Nov-2022

Tiniest ever ancient seawater pockets revealed

Findings could open up a whole new chapter in climate science and help identify subsurface locations to safely store hydrogen for carbon-free energy

Peer-Reviewed Publication

DOE/PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY

 

IMAGE: ANCIENT SEAWATER POCKETS TRAPPED IN AN IRON PYRITE FRAMBOID, SHOWN HERE, OFFER A NEW SOURCE OF CLUES TO CLIMATE CHANGE IN VANISHED OCEANS AND OUR OWN. view more 

CREDIT: (PHOTO COURTESY OF DANIEL GREGORY | UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO; COLOR ADDED BY CORTLAND JOHNSON | PACIFIC NORTHWEST NATIONAL LABORATORY)

RICHLAND, Wash.—Trapped for millennia, the tiniest liquid remnants of an ancient inland sea have now been revealed. The surprising discovery of seawater sealed in what is now North America for 390 million years opens up a new avenue for understanding how oceans change and adapt with the changing climate. The method may also be useful in understanding how hydrogen can be safely stored underground and transported for use as a carbon-free fuel source.

“We discovered we can actually dig out information from these mineral features that could help inform geologic studies, such as the seawater chemistry from ancient times,” said Sandra Taylor, first author of the study and a scientist at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Taylor worked with PNNL colleagues Daniel Perea, John Cliff, and Libor Kovarik to perform the analyses in collaboration with geochemists Daniel Gregory of the University of Toronto and Timothy Lyons of the University of California, Riverside. The research team reported their discovery in the December 2022 issue of Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

Ancient seas; modern tools

Many types of minerals and gems contain small pockets of trapped liquid. Indeed, some gemstones are prized for their light-catching bubbles of liquid trapped within. What’s different in this study is that scientists were able to reveal what was inside the tiniest water pockets, using advanced microscopy and chemical analyses.

The findings of the study confirmed that the water trapped inside the rock fit the chemistry profile of the ancient inland saltwater sea that once occupied upstate New York, where the rock originated. During the Middle Devonian period, this inland sea stretched from present day Michigan to Ontario, Canada. It harbored a coral reef to rival Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Sea scorpions the size of a pickup truck patrolled waters that harbored now-extinct creatures like trilobites, and the earliest examples of horseshoe crabs.

But eventually the climate changed, and along with that change, most of the creatures and the sea itself disappeared, leaving behind only fossil remains embedded in sediments that eventually became the pyrite rock sample used in the current experiment.

Clues to an ancient climate and to climate change

Scientists use rock samples as evidence to piece together how the climate has changed over the long span of geologic time.

“We use mineral deposits to estimate the temperature of the ancient oceans,” said Gregory, a geologist at the University of Toronto, and one of the study leaders. But there are relatively few useful examples in the geological record.

“Salt deposits from trapped seawater [halite] are relatively rare in the rock record, so there are millions of years missing in the records and what we currently know is based on a few localities where there is halite found,” Gregory said. By contrast, pyrite is found everywhere. “Sampling with this technique could open up millions of years of the geologic record and lead to new understanding of changing climate.”

Sandra Taylor, a PNNL chemist, loads a sample into an atom probe tomography instrument.

CREDIT

(Photo by Eric Francavilla | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Seawater surprise

The research team was trying to understand another environmental issue—toxic arsenic leaching from rock—when they noticed the tiny defects. Scientists describe the appearance of these particular pyrite minerals as framboids—derived from the French word for raspberry—because they look like clusters of raspberry segments under the microscope.

“We looked at these samples through the electron microscope first, and we saw these kind of mini bubbles or mini features within the framboid and wondered what they were,” Taylor said.

Using the precise and sensitive detection techniques of atom probe tomography and mass spectrometry—which can detect minuscule amounts of elements or impurities in minerals—the team worked out that the bubbles indeed contained water and their salt chemistry matched that of ancient seas.

From ancient sea to modern energy storage

These types of studies also have the potential to provide interesting insights into how to safely store hydrogen or other gases underground.

“Hydrogen is being explored as a low-carbon fuel source for various energy applications. This requires being able to safely retrieve and store large-amounts of hydrogen in underground geologic reservoirs. So it’s important to understand how hydrogen interacts with rocks,” said Taylor. “Atom probe tomography is one of the few techniques where you can not only measure atoms of hydrogen, but you can actually see where it goes in the mineral. This study suggests that tiny defects in minerals might be potential traps for hydrogen. So by using this technique we could figure out what’s going on at the atomic level, which would then help in evaluating and optimizing strategies for hydrogen storage in the subsurface.”

This research was conducted at EMSL, the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science user facility at PNNL. Lyons and Gregory applied to use the facility through a competitive application process. The research was also supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

(Video by Sara Levine | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)

Ancient seawater pockets offer a new source of clues that could help us better understand how oceans are affected by climate change. A collaborative research team discovered nanoscale seawater pockets hidden in iron pyrite from upstate New York. This technique could open up a whole new chapter in climate science and potentially help identify subsurface locations to safely store hydrogen for carbon-free energy.

JOURNAL

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

DOI

10.1016/j.epsl.2022.117859 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Pushing the limits: Resolving paleoseawater signatures in nanoscale fluid inclusions by atom probe tomography

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Dec-2022

COP must reverse rising pessimism over building sector decarbonization, new study argues

Social media engagement with climate policy events is vital to reducing building emissions and ensuring environmental justice, research led by the University of Cambridge suggests.

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

Negativity on Twitter about decarbonising the built environment has increased by around a third since 2014, according to a new analysis of more than 250,000 tweets featuring #emissions and #building between 2009 and 2021.

 

The pessimistic trend has followed the launch of major climate action reports. The study, published today in Nature Scientific Reports, reveals that expressions of ‘fear’ in Twitter dialogue increased by around 60% following the launch of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report on Climate Change in 2015.

The researchers, from Cambridge, Boston, Sussex and Aarhus Universities and Caltech, also found that ‘sadness’ increased by around 30% following the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming 1.5◦C in November 2019; while debate in November 2020 over lobbying of builders and utility companies over non-compliance with new building codes in the US triggered a spike in ‘anger’.

Mapping tweets that caused spikes in emotional engagement revealed that public concerns triangulated around inaction towards emission reduction, the fairness of carbon tax, the politicisation of building codes (distinctively seen for the US) and concerns over environmental degradation. This demonstrates, the researchers argue, “a strong environmental justice discourse.”

The findings appear on the heels of COP27’s building sector events (10th – 14th November), which sought to promote a just transition and enhancing building resilience with the tagline ‘Build4Tomorrow’.

Lead author Ramit Debnath, Cambridge Zero Fellow at the University of Cambridge and a visiting faculty associate in Computational Social Science at Caltech, says:

“Major climate policy events including COP have emphasised how difficult it is to decarbonise the built environment and this has been reflected in the rise of negative feelings on social media.

“But our research also offers hope – we found that climate policy events can and do foster public engagement, mostly positive, and that this has the power to increase the building sector’s focus on environmental justice.

“To build for tomorrow fairly, global climate action has to incorporate and empower diverse public voices. Policy actions are no longer isolated events in this digital age and demand two-way communication. Policy events and social media have a crucial role to play in this.”

The study highlights that the building sector is one of the most important and challenging to decarbonise. The IPCC suggests that restricting climate change to 1.5◦C requires rapid and extensive changes around energy use, building design, and broader planning of cities and infrastructure. The buildings and construction sector currently accounts for around 39% of global energy and process-related carbon emissions. The International Energy Agency estimates that to achieve a net-zero carbon building stock by 2050, direct building carbon emissions must decrease by 50%, and indirect building sector emissions must also decrease 60% by 2030.

But decarbonising the building sector is challenging because it involves a complex overlap of people, places and practices that creates a barrier to designing just emission reduction policies. The study argues that democratising the decarbonisation process “remains a critical challenge across the local, national and regional scales”.

Debnath says: “Our findings shed light on potential pathways for a people-centric transition to a greener building sector in a net-zero future.”

Using advanced natural language processing and network theory, the researchers found a strong relationship between Twitter activity concerning the building sector and major policy events on climate change. They identify heightened Twitter engagement around developments including: the Paris Agreement’s call for the building sector to reduce its emissions through energy efficiency and address its whole life cycle; COP-23’s ’Human Settlement Day’ which focused on cities, affordable housing and climate action; COP25’s discourse on green/climate finance for residential homes; and COP26’s ’Cities, Region and Built environment Day’.

The researchers found that despite negative sentiments gaining an increasing share since 2014, positive sentiments have continued to multiply as Twitter engagement has exploded. Across the entire study period (2009–21), positive sentiments have fairly consistently maintained a larger share of the conversation than negative sentiments.

The study highlights the fact that core topics covered by tweets have changed significantly over time, as new innovations, technologies and issues have emerged. Hashtags associated with COP26, for instance, included #woodforgood and #masstimber, as well as #housingcrisis, #healthybuildings #scaleupnow, and #climatejusticenow, all largely or entirely absent in Twitter conversations between 2009 and 2016.

The researchers found that discourse on innovative emissions reduction strategies which remain uncommon in the building sector— including use of alternate building materials like cross-laminated timber; implementing climate-sensitive building codes; and the circular economy – inspired Tweets expressing ‘anticipation’.

Debnath says: “COP26 was an extraordinary moment – the Twitter engagement surrounding the event connected public health, the circular economy, affordable housing, and decarbonisation of the built environment like never before.”

“We are seeing a paradigm shift in the building emission discourse towards broader social and environmental justice contexts. Reference to low-carbon alternatives to concrete, housing crisis, scaling-up and climate justice are all part of the growing social justice movement associated with healthy and affordable social housing narratives globally.”

The study notes that considering the size of Twitter’s current user base (around 211 million users globally), the number of tweets about emissions in the building sector, remains relatively small.

Debnath says: “It’s crucial that policymakers raise the salience of these issues and develop communications strategies to emphasise the importance of climate action in hard-to-decarbonise sectors like the building sector.”

The authors of the study intend to continue to analyse social media interaction with further climate policy events, beginning with COP27.

Co-author Professor Benjamin Sovacool, Director of Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston University said: “Some people dismiss Twitter as a poor focus of academic research, given its ability to spread misinformation and fake news. But we instead see it as a lens into the inner workings of how millions of people think, and rethink, about energy and climate change. It offers an incredible opportunity to reveal people’s true intentions, their revealed preferences, in unbiased form on a public forum.”

Co-author Prof R. Michael Alvarez, Professor of Political and Computational Social Science at Caltech, said: “This is an innovative and important study, showing how an interdisciplinary and international group of scholars can use big data and machine learning to provide policy guidance on how to decarbonize the build sector.  Research like this is critical at this time, to inform the debates at forums like COP27 and to energise additional scholarly work that can help further our goal of democratising climate action.”

Reference

Debnath, R., Bardhan, R., Shah, D.U., Mohaddes, K., Ramage, M.H., Alvarez, M.R., and Sovacool, B. (2022), 'Social media enables people-centric climate action in the hard-to-decarbonise building sector'. Nature Scientific Reports, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41589-022-23624-9

Notes to editor

The paper is co-authored by Dr Ramit Debnath (Cambridge Zero and Churchill College, University of Cambridge, and Caltech), Prof Ronita Bardhan (Selwyn College, Cambridge), Prof. Darshil U. Shah (St John’s College, Cambridge), Prof. Kamiar Mohaddes (King’s College, Cambridge), Prof. Michael H. Ramage (Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge), Prof. R. Michael Alvarez (Caltech) and Prof. Benjamin Sovacool (Boston University, Aarhus University and University of Sussex).

The collaborative team was established as a part of the deliverables of the Alan Turing Institute’s Postdoctoral Enrichment Award - 2022 to Dr Ramit Debnath.

This study is in parts funded by Laudes Foundation, Quadrature Climate Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Keynes Fund, UK Space Agency NSIP Award and Caltech’s Resnick Sustainability Institute. 

Cambridge Zero is the University of Cambridge’s major climate initiative. It exists to maximise the University of Cambridge’s contribution towards achieving a resilient and sustainable zero-carbon world. Cambridge Zero is not just about developing greener technologies or a zero-carbon university. We are harnessing the full range and breadth of the Collegiate University’s capabilities, both in the UK and globally, to develop solutions that work for our lives, our society and our economy.

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JOURNAL

Scientific Reports

DOI

10.1038/s41589-022-23624-9 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Social media enables people-centric climate action in the hard-to-decarbonise building sector

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Nov-2022

MSU shows how history can affect the success and failure of ecological restoration

Peer-Reviewed Publication

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: THE EXPERIMENTAL SITE ARBOR LUXE RESERVE LET THE MSU TEAM INVESTIGATE HOW PLANTING YEAR AFFECTED THE TRAJECTORY OF RESTORED PRAIRIE. NATIVE BIG BLUESTEM GRASS IS VISIBLE IN THE BACK, STANDING TALLER THAN THE PURPLE FLOWERS OF SPOTTED KNAPWEED IN THE FRONT, WHICH IS NATIVE TO EUROPE AND GENERALLY CONSIDERED INVASIVE IN NORTH AMERICA. view more 

CREDIT: LARS BRUDVIG

Images

Highlights:

• MSU ecologists have shown that efforts to restore prairies can have vastly different outcomes in terms of their biodiversity and functionality when the only variable is the year a prairie is planted. They’ve reported their findings in the journal Ecology.
   
• The study also reveals interesting new complexities in the relationships between biodiversity and how functional or productive a restored ecosystem becomes. 
   
• The research builds on nearly a decade’s worth of work at a unique restoration site at MSU’s W.K. Kellogg Biological Station. Proposed in 2013 and established in 2014, the site is both realistic and controlled enough to gain fundamental insights into the role of a land’s history in ecological restoration.

EAST LANSING, Mich. – There’s a popular saying that people who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. It turns out that there’s another reason not to ignore history according to new research from Michigan State University published in the journal Ecology.

When it comes to restoring ecosystems to their natural state, people can’t ignore history if they want to repeat successful efforts.

“Restoration is somewhat notorious for giving you different outcomes for very similar approaches,” said Chris Catano, a research associate in the Department of Plant Biology at MSU and first author of the new report. “There’s a lot of variability.”

Catano works with Lars Brudvig, a professor in the College of Natural Science. One of the Brudvig Lab’sprojects is illuminating the fundamental factors that contribute to that variability. With support from the National Science Foundation, this new study focuses on one of those factors — when a plot is restored — through the lens of biodiversity.

“What we’re seeing is that the past matters. History matters,” Catano said.

Working at a site that was once an active airstrip, the team restored 18 plots to prairie. The researchers kept all the restoration conditions as identical as possible except for when the restoration started. 

They then tracked how different communities of organisms came together in those plots — for example, which species of plants grew and what other organisms they attracted. Beyond characterizing biodiversity, the team also analyzed how it affects the downstream ecological functions of a plot.

“This has been a huge question in ecology for nearly 30 years now, understanding what are the consequences of biodiversity for the ways an ecosystem functions,” said Brudvig, who is also a core faculty member of the Ecology, Evolution and Behavior Program, or EEB, at MSU.

Somewhat surprisingly, more biodiversity didn’t always translate to a more functional ecosystem in the team’s experiment. 

There is a lot of evidence supporting a positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem function, but many of those studies were carried out in highly controlled environments, the team said. With its unique site, designed specifically to examine the effects of history, the team observed that the relationship is more complex in a more natural setting.

“We saw relationships that ranged from positive to neutral to negative,” Brudvig said. “In nature, the results are a huge mixed bag.”

Brudvig stressed that this work doesn’t discount the previous results or negate the conclusion that, generally speaking, more biodiversity is a good thing. In individual cases, however, Brudvig’s team is showing that the impact of biodiversity is nuanced and complicated — it can’t be summed up in a single value or measured quantity.

“There isn’t a number for biodiversity that tells you the whole story,” Catano said. “In this case, it was the identity of key species and their traits, which are hidden behind numbers, that really matter for how the ecosystems function.”

By Matt Davenport 

Read more on MSUToday.

The boundary between two plots of prairie restored by MSU researchers, where the difference between them is the year they were planted. Native big bluestem grass in dominant in the plot to the left, while purple flowers belonging to non-native knapweed populate the plot on the right.

CREDIT

Lars Brudvig

Anna Funk, who earned her Ph.D. from MSU in 2018.

CREDIT

Nash Turley

Fires have become a normal part of prairie development. With controlled burns, the MSU team showed that prairie plots with more bluestem prairie grass — and less biodiversity — burned hotter.

CREDIT

Lars Brudvig

 

Michigan State University has been advancing the common good with uncommon will for more than 165 years. One of the world's leading research universities, MSU pushes the boundaries of discovery to make a better, safer, healthier world for all while providing life-changing opportunities to a diverse and inclusive academic community through more than 200 programs of study in 17 degree-granting colleges.

For MSU news on the Web, go to MSUToday. Follow MSU News on Twitter at twitter.com/MSUnews.

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DOI

10.1002/ecy.3910 

Lung infections caused by soil fungi are a problem nationwide

Outdated maps of disease-causing fungi may lead to delayed, missed diagnoses

Peer-Reviewed Publication

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

 

IMAGE: THE FUNGUS HISTOPLASMA, WHICH CAUSES LUNG INFECTIONS, WAS CONCENTRATED IN THE MIDWEST IN THE 1950S AND 60S (TOP MAP), BUT NOW CAUSES SIGNIFICANT DISEASE THROUGHOUT MUCH OF THE COUNTRY (BOTTOM). RESEARCHERS AT WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE IN ST. LOUIS DISCOVERED THAT THE THREE MAIN KINDS OF SOIL FUNGI THAT CAUSE LUNG INFECTIONS HAVE ALL EXPANDED THEIR RANGES IN RECENT DECADES. RELIANCE ON OUTDATED MAPS COULD BE CAUSING DELAYED OR MISSED DIAGNOSES. view more 

CREDIT: PATRICK MAZI AND ANDREJ SPEC/WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY

Fungi in the soil cause a significant number of serious lung infections in 48 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia, including many areas long thought to be free of deadly environmental fungi, according to a study by researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Studies from the 1950s and 60s indicated that fungal lung infections were a problem only in certain parts of the country. The new study, available online in Clinical Infectious Diseases, shows that is no longer the case. Doctors who rely on outdated maps of disease-causing fungi may miss the signs of a fungal lung infection, resulting in delayed or incorrect diagnoses, the researchers said.

“Every few weeks I get a call from a doctor in the Boston area – a different doctor every time – about a case they can’t solve,” said senior author Andrej Spec, MD, an associate professor of medicine and a specialist in fungal infections. “They always start by saying, ‘We don’t have histo here, but it really kind of looks like histo.’ I say, ‘You guys call me all the time about this. You do have histo.’”

Histoplasma, or histo, is one of the three main species of soil fungi that cause lung infections in the U.S. Historically, Histoplasma was found in the Midwest and parts of the East, Coccidioides in the Southwest, and Blastomyces in the Midwest and the South. But a growing number of case reports and anecdotes suggest that all three have expanded out of their traditional ranges in recent decades, most likely due to climate change.

People develop fungal lung infections after breathing in spores from fungi in the soil. The spores become airborne when the ground is disturbed by farming, landscaping, construction or even just by people walking around in fungi-rich environments such as caves. Most healthy adults and children can fight off a fungal infection handily, but infants, older adults and people with compromised immune systems may develop fever, cough, fatigue and other symptoms. Fungal lung infections easily can be mistaken for bacterial or viral lung infections such as COVID-19, bacterial pneumonia and tuberculosis.

“People with fungal lung infection often spend weeks trying to get the right diagnosis and appropriate treatment, and the whole time they’re feeling terrible,” said lead author Patrick B. Mazi, MD, a clinical fellow in infectious diseases. “They usually have multiple health-care visits with multiple opportunities for testing and diagnosis, but the doctor just doesn’t consider a fungal infection until they’ve exhausted all other possibilities.”

Spec, Mazi and colleagues set out to determine where soil fungi are sickening people today. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) last revised its maps of disease-causing fungi in 1969.

The researchers calculated the number of fungal lung infections nationwide from 2007 to 2016 using Medicare fee-for-service claims from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Using the patients’ home addresses to identify counties of residence, they calculated the number of cases per 100,000 person-years for each county. (Person-years are a way to correct for the fact that counties can have wildly different population sizes; one person on Medicare for one year is one person-year). Counties with more than 100 cases caused by Histoplasma or Coccidioides, or 50 cases caused by Blastomyces, per 100,000 person-years were defined as having a meaningful number of fungal lung infections.

Of the 3,143 counties in the U.S., 1,806 had meaningful numbers of lung infections caused by Histoplasma, 339 of Coccidioides and 547 of Blastomyces. These counties were distributed across the majority of the U.S. Across the 50 states plus DC, 94% had at least one county with a problem with Histoplasma lung infections, 69% with Coccidioides and 78% with Blastomyces.

“Fungal infections are much more common than people realize, and they’re spreading,” Spec said. “The scientific community has underinvested in studying and developing treatments for fungal infections. I think that’s beginning to change, but slowly. It’s important for the medical community to realize these fungi are essentially everywhere these days and that we need to take them seriously and include them in considering diagnoses.”

CAPTION

The three main species of fungi that cause lung infections in the U.S. — Histoplasma (red), Blastomyces (blue) and Coccidioides (green) — have all expanded their ranges in recent decades. These maps were created based on data from 1955 (top row) and 2007-2016 (bottom row). Reliance on outdated maps may lead to delayed or missed diagnoses.

CREDIT

Patrick Mazi and Andrej Spec/Washington University

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JOURNAL

Clinical Infectious Diseases

DOI

10.1093/cid/ciac882 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Observational study

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

The Geographic Distribution of Dimorphic Mycoses in the United States for the Modern Era.

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

11-Nov-2022

COI STATEMENT

P.B.M., A.M.R, J.M.S., A.C.R., M.P. report no conflicts. M.A.O. reports grants, consulting fees, and personal fees from Pfizer. W.G.P. reports grants and personal fees from Merck and Co, and National Institute for Health (not directly related to this work), personal fees from Gilead Sciences. A.S. reports grants from Astellas Global Development Pharma, Inc., grants from Scynexis, grants from Cidara, grants and personal fees from Mayne Pharma. A.C.R. reports grants or contracts from Metabolic Skeletal Disorders Training Grant through the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (T32AR060719, Funding for author PhD stipend 2020-2022 though Washington University School of Medicine) and support for attending CSHL Mechanisms of Aging Meeting 2022 (Division of Bone and Mineral Diseases, Washington University in St. Louis). M.P reports consulting fees from Clinton health Access initiative (external consulting as web developer).