Soy expansion in Brazil linked to increase in childhood leukemia deaths

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS COLLEGE OF AGRICULTURAL, CONSUMER AND ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES

 

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BRAZIL’S RAPID EXPANSION OF SOY PRODUCTION HAS MEANT AN ASSOCIATED RISE IN PESTICIDE USE. UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS RESEARCHERS AND COLLABORATORS FOUND A STATISTICALLY SIGNIFICANT CORRELATION BETWEEN SOY EXPANSION AND ACUTE LYMPHOBLASTIC LEUKEMIA (ALL) DEATHS IN CHILDREN BETWEEN 2008 AND 2019, REPRESENTING THE FIRST POPULATION-WIDE ANALYSIS OF THE ASSOCIATION BETWEEN INDIRECT EXPOSURE TO AGRICULTURAL PESTICIDES AND CANCER.

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CREDIT: LISA RAUSCH, UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN

URBANA, Ill. – Over the past decades, Brazil has become the world’s leading soybean producer, as well as the leading consumer of pesticides. Despite concerns about potential public health consequences, little is known about the effects of pesticide exposure in the general population. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in collaboration with the University of Denver and University of Wisconsin-Madison looks at how soy expansion and increased pesticide use in Brazil’s Cerrado and Amazon biomes correlate with increased childhood cancer mortality.

“The Brazilian Amazon region is undergoing a transition from low-input cattle production to intensified soy culture with high use of pesticides and herbicides. The expansion has happened really quickly, and it appears educational efforts and training for pesticide applicators didn’t match the growth in pesticide use. When not used properly, there are health implications,” said Marin Skidmore, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I. Skidmore is lead author on the paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

“As this transition was happening, there were documented cases of pesticide poisoning of agricultural workers and evidence of chemicals in the blood and urine samples of non-agricultural workers in the surrounding communities,” Skidmore said. “This indicates that this rollout had happened in a potentially dangerous way that was leaving people exposed.”

The researchers investigated public health consequences of exposure to pesticides, focusing on children as the most vulnerable population. They specifically looked at deaths from acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), the most common childhood bloodborne cancer.

Their study drew from data on health outcomes, land use, surface water, and demographics in the Amazon and Cerrado biomes. The sample primarily consisted of areas that are classified as “rural” and have at least 25% of land cover in agriculture.

Soy production in the Cerrado area tripled from 2000 to 2019, and in the Amazon region there was a 20-fold increase, from 0.25 to 5 million hectares. Pesticide use in the study region increased between three- and ten-fold during the period as well. Brazilian soy farmers apply pesticides at a rate 2.3 times higher per hectare than the United States.

“Our results show a significant relationship between Brazil’s soy expansion and childhood deaths from ALL in the region,” Skidmore said. “Results suggest that about half of pediatric leukemia deaths over a ten-year period may be linked to agricultural intensification and exposure to pesticides.”

Skidmore and her colleagues show that a 10-percentage point increase in soy production is associated with an additional 0.40 deaths from ALL of children under 5 and an additional 0.21 deaths under 10 per 10,000 population. In total, they estimate that 123 children under 10 died from ALL associated with pesticide exposure between 2008 and 2019, out of a total of 226 reported deaths from ALL in the same period.

Skidmore emphasized that the study doesn’t provide a direct, causal link between pesticide exposure and cancer deaths, but the researchers take a number of steps to rule out other potential explanations. They found no correlations between ALL deaths and soy consumption, changes in socioeconomic status, or prevalence of crops with lower rates of pesticide applications.

The researchers also investigated contamination of water sources as a primary method of pesticide exposure.

“We looked for evidence of pesticide application upstream, in the watershed that flows into a region, and we found it is related to leukemia outcomes in the downstream region. This indicates that pesticide runoff into surface water is a likely method of exposure,” Skidmore explained.

“About 50% of the rural households in this region had a well or cistern at the time of the 2006 agricultural census, which left the other 50% reliant on surface water as a source of drinking water. If the surface water is contaminated, pesticides used in soy production upstream can reach children living downstream through waterways.” 

“Our concern is that our results are only the tip of the iceberg. We measured one small, very precise outcome. Pesticide exposure may also result in non-fatal cases of leukemia, and there is a risk of impacts on the adult and teenage community,” she said.

ALL is a highly treatable disease, but it requires access to quality medical care. In the entire Amazon region, the researchers identified only two high-complexity pediatric oncology centers, although other facilities can also provide treatment. They found that the increase in observed pediatric ALL deaths following soy expansion was limited to municipalities that were more than 100 kilometers from a treatment center. 

“Our results indicate that there are several ways to mitigate the relationship between pesticide exposure and ALL deaths,” Skidmore said. “This includes training and education for agricultural workers, smart regulations for pesticide use, and access to health care. We certainly are not advocating for a wholesale stop of using these inputs. They are important and valuable technologies, but they need to be handled safely and with some checks in place.”

Brazil is currently developing a certification program that requires pesticide applicators to undergo safety training and education. Such programs exist in many countries, including the United States, where pesticide applicators are required to be licensed and participate in an annual pesticide safety education and testing program.

“I think there is a strong awareness that safe use of pesticides is what's best both for agricultural productivity and for the communities. This soy expansion and boom are in many ways a huge win for Brazil's economy,” Skidmore stated.

“We want to highlight that when changes happen fast, there are risks associated with that, and this is not isolated to Brazil. There is a lot of focus on agricultural intensification for global food security around the world. We need to find a balance where we get the productive benefits while mitigating any potential risks. When there is rapid rollout of these technologies in a new region, often an underdeveloped or poor region, how do we ensure there are guardrails in place to prevent another case like this?”

Percent of municipal area planted in soy in 2004 and 2019 across the Amazon and Cerrado regions of Brazil.

CREDIT

Used with permission from Marin Skidmore

JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

ARTICLE TITLE

Agricultural intensification and public health: Evidence from Brazilian soy expansion

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

 

Amazon deforestation linked to long distance climate warming 

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

 

IMAGE: 

THE AMAZON FOREST SEEN FROM THE AMAZON TALL TOWER OBSERVATORY, A SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH FACILITY IN THE AMAZON RAINFOREST OF BRAZIL. 

 

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CREDIT: IF THE IMAGE IS USED, PLEASE CREDIT DR JESS BAKER, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS.

Deforestation in the Amazon causes land surfaces up to 100 kilometres away to get warmer, according to a new study.  

The research, by a team of British and Brazilian scientists, led by Dr Edward Butt at the University of Leeds, suggests that tropical forests play a critical role in cooling the land surface - and that effect can play out over considerable distances. 

It is known that when tropical forests are cleared, the climate in the immediate vicinity gets warmer.  

In this latest study, the researchers wanted to know if deforestation in the Amazon was resulting in climate warming further afield, and the study examined the impact of forest loss on sites up to 100 kilometres away. 

Critical importance 

Dr Butt, a research fellow based in the School of Earth and Environment at Leeds, said: “Understanding the impact of forest loss in the Amazon is of critical importance. 

“The world is getting warmer as a result of climate change. It is important that we understand how deforestation of the Amazon ecosystem is contributing to climate warming. If deforestation is warming surrounding regions, this would have big implications for people living in those areas.” 

As part of the study, reported today (Monday, Oct 30) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers combined satellite data of land surface temperature and forest loss in the Amazon for the period 2001 to 2020. 

Data was analysed at 3.7 million locations across the Amazon basin. The researchers compared the warming that had occurred over regions with varying amounts of local and regional deforestation.  

The researchers classed deforestation within 2 km of a data collection point as local. If it was further afield, between 2 and 100 kilometres away, it was classed as regional.  

Cumulative impact of regional forest loss 

Analysing the data, the scientists found that in those areas where there was little deforestation both locally and regionally, the average change in land temperature over the 2001 to 2021 period was 0.3 °C. Locations with 40% to 50% local deforestation but little regional deforestation, warmed by an average of 1.3 °C.  

In comparison, in areas with both local and regional deforestation, the average temperature rise was 4.4 °C. 

Writing in the paper, the researchers added: “The regional warming due to Amazon deforestation will have negative consequences for the 30 million people living within the Amazon basin, many of whom are already exposed to dangerous levels of heat.” 

Impact of Amazon deforestation 

The scientists also analysed how future deforestation might further warm the Brazilian Amazon over the 30 years from 2020. They looked at two scenarios, one where the Forest Code is ignored and protected areas not safeguarded. The second, where there is some protection in place. 

In the southern Amazon, where forest loss is the greatest, reducing deforestation would have the biggest benefit reducing future warming by more than 0.5 °C in Mato Grosso state. 

Professor Dominick Spracklen, from the University of Leeds and a co-author in the study, said: “It is well known that protecting tropical forests is crucial in the fight against global climate change. Our work shows that protecting forests will also have big benefits at a local, regional and national scale.  

“We show that reducing deforestation would reduce future warming across the southern Amazon. This would benefit people living across the region through reducing heat stress and reducing the negative impacts on agriculture.”   

Dr Celso von Randow, a researcher from the Brazilian National Institute for Space Research and a co-author of the study, said: “In Brazil, studies on the importance of conserving forests for carbon storage are common, but we still lack studies on their biophysical effects. This is important because the Amazon is warming rapidly due to climate change, and now exacerbated by deforestation.  

“New efforts to control deforestation across the Brazilian Amazon have been successful and deforestation rates have declined over the last year, and now we see benefits of possibly reducing the warming affecting people living in this region. Recognising such benefits will hopefully result in more widespread support for continued efforts to reduce deforestation and protect forests.” 

The paper - “Amazon deforestation causes strong regional warming” - is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and can be downloaded from the journal website when the embargo lifts (https://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.2309123120)

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JOURNAL

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2309123120 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Not applicable

ARTICLE TITLE

Amazon deforestation linked to long distance climate warming

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

 

Microplastics’ shape determines how far they travel in the atmosphere

Peer-Reviewed Publication

CORNELL UNIVERSITY

ITHACA, N.Y. –Micron-size microplastic debris can be carried by the jet stream across oceans and continents, and their shape plays a crucial role in how far they travel.

A Cornell University collaboration has developed a model to simulate the atmospheric transport of microplastic fibers and shows that flat fibers travel farther in the lower atmosphere, and are more prevalent, than spherical fibers. Previous studies assumed these fibers to be spherical.

The modeling has the potential to help scientists determine the sources of the pervasive waste – which could inform policy efforts to reduce it.

The group’s paper published in Nature Geoscience.

By treating flat fibers as spherical or cylindrical shaped, prior studies had overestimated their rate of deposition. Factoring in the fibers’ flat shape means they spend 450% more time in the atmosphere than previously calculated, and therefore travel longer distances.

In addition, the modeling suggests the ocean may play a larger role in emitting microplastic aerosols directly into the atmosphere than previously known, according to Qi Li, assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and senior author of the paper.

“We can now more accurately attribute the sources of microplastic particles that will eventually come to be transported to the air,” she said. “If you know where they’re coming from, then you can come up with a better management plan and policies or regulations to reduce the plastic waste. This could also have implications for any heavy particles that are transported in the lower atmosphere, like dust and pollen.”

The research was supported by the National Science Foundation, and computational resources were provided by the National Center for Atmospheric Research.

For additional information, see this Cornell Chronicle story.

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JOURNAL

Nature Geoscience

DOI

10.1038/s41561-023-01264-6 

ARTICLE TITLE

Long-distance atmospheric transport of microplastic fibres influenced by their shapes

 

Roe v. Wade repeal impacts where young women choose to go to college, PSU researcher finds

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PORTLAND STATE UNIVERSITY

The impacts of Roe v. Wade's reversal in 2022 are still being understood, but new research from Portland State's Rajiv Sharma provides another piece of the puzzle.

Sharma found that in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, female students are more likely to choose a university or college in states where abortion rights and access are upheld. The research, conducted with the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, indicates a potential impact on future workforces and economic development in states with stricter abortion laws as young people often live and work in the state they go to college.

The research team is currently collecting data on first-year students who are part of the first class to apply to college in a post-Roe world. Sharma argues if the trend continues and college applicants to less selective institutions in states with limited abortion rights, the economic implications could be larger than initially discovered.

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JOURNAL

Economics Letters

DOI

10.1016/j.econlet.2023.111379 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Anticipatory impacts of the repeal of Roe v. Wade on female college applicants

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

1-Dec-2023

 

Amphibians have one more thing to worry about—mercury—large USGS study shows

Peer-Reviewed Publication

U.S. GEOLOGICAL SURVEY

RESTON, Va. — The first widescale assessment of methylmercury in adult amphibians in the U.S. to date shows that, in amphibians, this toxic compound is common, widespread and, at least for some, can reach very high levels.

The study, “Broad-scale Assessment of Methylmercury in Adult Amphibians,” which published today in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, brought together scientists from around the country to test more than 3,200 amphibians representing 14 species from 26 populations.

“Amphibians are the most endangered group of vertebrates worldwide, but until this study, we knew relatively little about the variability of mercury bioaccumulation in amphibians” said Anne Kinsinger, USGS Associate Director for Ecosystems. “Trailblazing USGS science, like this study, provides a solid foundation for research and helps managers address the most pressing issues facing fish and wildlife conservation.”

The amount of methylmercury in amphibians varied by site and by life history characteristics—such as diet, size and sex. Amphibian methylmercury concentrations in this study ranged from barely detectible at some locations, to levels well above wildlife health benchmarks in others.

Although the variation in concentrations between amphibians was large, with the highest measurement 33 times more than the lowest, it was much less than the variation reported for other animals like dragonflies, fishes and birds. The authors suggested the lower variation among amphibians was possibly because they collected samples mainly from wetlands whereas the studies on the other animal types collected samples from a larger diversity of habitats.

Contaminants, such as mercury—a contaminant of global concern because it is harmful to humans and other animals—are suspected to be one reason amphibians are declining, though scientists haven’t teased out mercury’s role, if any, in their decline.

Often formed by microbes living in water, methylmercury is the most bioavailable form of mercury that is highly toxic to vertebrates. It enters the food web and is hard for animals to get rid of once internal, so it accumulates in animals as they continue to feed, a process scientists call bioaccumulation.

“Despite its toxicity, scientists only have a limited understanding of methylmercury’s effects on amphibians,” said Brian Tornabene, USGS Post-doctoral Researcher and the study’s first author. “The results from this study can be used to inform future research on the health effects of methylmercury exposure on amphibians, which for some was very high.”

Study author and lead for the USGS Amphibian Research and Monitoring Initiative, Michael Adams, noted that this study also provides new methods and baseline data that can help scientists and managers assess the risk from mercury for species of management concern, including species listed as threatened and endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

The study even found a way to understand mercury bioaccumulation for amphibians that can’t be sampled—by using dragonfly larvae. Scientists determined that the concentration found in these insects are a good stand-in for estimating the amount of methylmercury bioaccumulation in amphibians, and there is already a nationwide USGS/National Park Service project underway sampling them.

A recent report by the IUCN showed that habitat loss was the greatest threat to amphibians, but their reliance on aquatic habitats also makes them susceptible to environmental contaminants like mercury. Scientists are only just starting to understand how exposure to contaminants contributes to amphibian population dynamics or how contaminants might interact with other threats, like disease. Part of understanding how exposure contributes to decline is determining how exposure varies, and this study provides the most complete picture to date of variation in methylmercury in amphibians.

Read the journal article for more details.

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JOURNAL

Environmental Science & Technology

DOI

10.1021/acs.est.3c05549 

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

Animals

ARTICLE TITLE

Broad-Scale Assessment of Methylmercury in Adult Amphibians

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

30-Oct-2023

COI STATEMENT

Any use of trade, firm or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the U.S. Government. The authors declare no competing financial interest.

 

Most websites do not publish privacy policies, researchers say

Reports and Proceedings

PENN STATE

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Online privacy policies may not only be difficult to find but nonexistent, according to Penn State researchers who crawled millions of websites and found that only one-third of online organizations made their privacy policy available for review.

“Privacy Lost and Found: An Investigation at Scale of Web Privacy Policy Availability,” a paper authored by students and faculty from the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), detailed an analysis of the online privacy policy landscape and studied the unavailability of privacy policies on company domains. It received the Best Student Paper Award at the 23rd Association for Computing Machinery Symposium on Document Engineering, also known as DocEng’23, held Aug. 23–25 at the University of Limerick in Ireland.

“Privacy policies are legal documents that organizations use to disclose how they collect, analyze, share and secure their online users’ personal data,” said Mukund Srinath, doctoral student in the College of IST and lead author of the paper. “Privacy policies are often the only source of information regarding what happens to users’ personal information online. The availability of privacy policies and the ability of users to understand them are fundamental to ensuring that individuals can make informed decisions about their personal information.”

Legal jurisdictions around the world require organizations to post privacy policies on their websites. The European Union, for example, regulates this disclosure through laws such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). In the United States, privacy policy regulations are set at the state level, such as the California Privacy Rights Act (CPRA).

These laws work under the principle of notice and choice, according to the researchers. Notice is a presentation of terms — in this case, the privacy policy — and choice is an action signifying the acceptance of those terms, such as clicking an “Accept” link or simply continuing to use the site.

Despite regulations such as GDPR and CPRA, most organizations are not in compliance, according to the researchers. That could mean that a company does not post its privacy policy or that it does so ineffectively, such as with a broken link, a blank page or unreadable content.

“Not many websites have privacy policies,” Srinath said. “For a user landing on a random website, there is only a 34% chance that a privacy policy exists. Among them, there is a 2% to 3% chance that the link is broken. And 5% of the links that do work will lead to a page that contains irrelevant information, such as placeholder text or documents in a language that doesn’t match the website’s landing page.”

The researchers conducted a large-scale investigation of the availability of privacy policies by crawling millions of English-language websites to identify when privacy policies were unavailable. They used the capture-recapture technique to estimate the frequencies of the failure modes and the overall unavailability of privacy policies on the web.

“We borrowed the technique that ecologists might use for animals in the wild,” said Pranav Venkit, doctoral student in the College of IST and co-author of the paper. “They go into a forest of bears, capture a small sample, tag them and send them back into the wild. They go back the next day and capture another set. The unseen versus the previously seen bears enable the ecologists to estimate the bear population.”

According to the researchers, proper resources are needed to support efforts to improve privacy policy availability rates.

“Regulators cannot keep up,” Srinath said. “They are often overwhelmed by the numbers of privacy policies on the web and forced to rely on user complaints or compliance self-certification to prompt investigations of missing or ineffective privacy policies.”

Promoting transparency and accountability in online data privacy practices is critical to the continued growth and development of the digital economy, according to co-author Shomir Wilson, assistant professor of IST, director of the Human Language Technologies (HLT) Lab at Penn State and adviser to Srinath and Venkit.

“This research provides important insights into the current state of privacy policy practices on the web that can inform efforts to develop more effective privacy policy standards and best practices as well as to improve the accessibility and comprehensibility of existing policies for users,” Wilson said. 

The National Science Foundation supported this work.

C. Lee Giles, the David Reese Professor Information Science and Technology, and Soundarya Nurani Sundareswara, a former graduate student, were co-authors.

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DOI

10.1145/3573128.3604902 

ARTICLE TITLE

Privacy Lost and Found: An Investigation at Scale of Web Privacy Policy Availability

 

Late not great – imperfect timekeeping places significant limit on quantum computers

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TRINITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

New research from a consortium of quantum physicists, led by Trinity College Dublin’s Dr Mark Mitchison, shows that imperfect timekeeping places a fundamental limit to quantum computers and their applications. The team claims that even tiny timing errors add up to place a significant impact on any large-scale algorithm, posing another problem that must eventually be solved if quantum computers are to fulfil the lofty aspirations that society has for them. 

It is difficult to imagine modern life without clocks to help organise our daily schedules; with a digital clock in every person’s smartphone or watch, we take precise timekeeping for granted – although that doesn’t stop people from being late!

And for quantum computers, precise timing is even more essential, as they exploit the bizarre behaviour of tiny particles – such as atoms, electrons, and photons – to process information. While this technology is still at an early stage, it promises to dramatically speed up the solution of important problems, like the discovery of new pharmaceuticals or materials. This potential has driven significant investment across the private and public sector, such as the establishment of the Trinity Quantum Alliance academic-industrial partnership launched earlier this year.

Currently, however, quantum computers are still too small to be useful. A major challenge to scaling them up is the extreme fragility of the quantum states that are used to encode information. In the macroscopic world, this is not a problem. For example, you can add numbers perfectly using an abacus, in which wooden beads are pushed back and forth to represent arithmetic operations. The wooden beads have very stable states: each one sits in a specific place and it will stay in place unless intentionally moved. Importantly, whether you move the bead quickly or slowly does not affect the result. 

But in quantum physics, it is more complicated. 

“Mathematically speaking, changing a quantum state in a quantum computer corresponds to a rotation in an abstract high-dimensional space,” says Jake Xuereb from the Atomic Institute at the Vienna University of Technology, the first author of the paper. “In order to achieve the desired state in the end, the rotation must be applied for a very specific period of time – otherwise you turn the state either too little or too far.”

Given that real clocks are never perfect, the team investigated the impact of imperfect timing on quantum algorithms.

“A quantum algorithm is like an app that runs on a quantum computer,” explains Trinity’s Dr Mitchison. “It was already known that timing errors could disrupt individual quantum logic gates, which are the building blocks of quantum algorithms. Our work extends this to full quantum algorithms, showing exactly how precise the clock must be to achieve a given computational accuracy.” 

Since the error gets worse for more complex algorithms, it will ultimately pose a challenge for quantum computers. 

“It’s not a problem at the moment,” clarifies Prof. Marcus Huber who leads the research team in Vienna. “Currently, the accuracy of quantum computers is still limited by other factors, for example the precision of the hardware components or the effect of stray electromagnetic fields. But our calculations also show that today we are not far from the regime in which the fundamental limits of time measurement will play the decisive role.” 

The team is quick to emphasise that the message is not entirely pessimistic, because the problem could be mitigated in the future by designing clever error correction protocols.

The ASPECTS consortium is funded by the European Union’s Quantum Flagship, while Dr Mitchison is supported by a Royal Society-Science Foundation Ireland University Research Fellowship.

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JOURNAL

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.131.160204 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Experimental study

PRISON NATION U$A

Prisons vulnerable to natural disasters, but ill-prepared

A study of 110 Colorado facilities found that 75%, housing 83% of the state's incarcerated population, are at risk of climate-related hazards

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT BOULDER

Three-quarters of Colorado prisons are likely to experience a natural disaster in the coming years, but due to aging infrastructure and outdated policies, many are ill-equipped to keep residents safe, suggests new CU Boulder research.

The study, published in the journal Natural Hazards Review, comes on the heels of one of the hottest summers on record and as U.S. lawmakers are calling for an investigation into a rash of what are believed to be heat-related deaths in the nation’s prisons.

In other research, including interviews and focus groups with 35 formerly incarcerated Coloradans, the researchers found that most had already suffered from climate-related hazards, experiencing everything from “brutally hot” or “ice cold” cells to respiratory problems related to wildfire smoke and lack of toilet facilities during floods.

“We showed that the incarceration infrastructure in Colorado is highly vulnerable to climate- related hazards and that incarcerated people who are Black and Hispanic are at even greater risk,” said Shideh Dashti, associate professor of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering and co-author on both studies. “This is a serious racial justice and environmental justice issue that needs to be addressed.” 

Prisoners among the most vulnerable

Researchers have long known that marginalized communities, including people of color, low-income families and people with disabilities, are more vulnerable to climate change. But those behind bars face added risk, as they can’t leave or adapt their space to escape threats. 

Facilities tend to be old, with poor insulation and outdated heat, ventilation and air-conditioning systems. Colorado’s oldest prison opened in 1871. About 40% of incarcerated individuals have a mental health diagnosis, and many take medication that impairs their ability to regulate body temperature.

“When coupled with the extreme temperatures, wildfire smoke and floods that climate change brings, these conditions and lack of agency render incarcerated people extremely vulnerable,” said co-author Ben Barron, a doctoral candidate and research assistant in the CU Boulder Department of Geography. 

Until recently, little research had been done in this area.

To address the gap, the interdisciplinary research team gathered census data on 110 Colorado facilities, including prisons, jails and juvenile detention and immigration detention centers. They used GIS mapping software and climate modeling data to calculate whether each facility was at low, medium or high risk of wildfire, heatwaves, floods and landslides.

They found that 74.5% of facilities housing 83% of Colorado’s incarcerated population have either moderate or high exposure to at least one hazard, and 17% percent are at risk of two.

One third of facilities, housing about 12,700 people, are at medium to high risk of wildfire.

Fifteen are at risk of flooding while, notably, 26 had no FEMA flood risk data available at all. 

About half of facilities are at risk of extreme heat. 

The study also found that incarceration facilities are more than twice as vulnerable to flooding than Colorado schools are. That’s relevant, the authors said, because unlike prisoners, students are free to leave when flood risk arises.

Black people are significantly more likely than whites to be jailed in a facility at risk of extreme heat, while Hispanic or Latino people are at greater risk of experiencing a flood while incarcerated, the study found.

‘We’re dying in here’

Dashti said the team had trouble getting information from many facilities about their engineering or architectural elements, but interviews with the formerly incarcerated painted a disturbing picture.

“It’s truly horrifying to listen to,” said Barron, who conducted nine interviews and four focus groups for a separate paper that has not yet been published. 

Some interviewees recalled temperatures soaring into the upper-90s inside their cells. 

“We just want the doors open because we’re dying in here,’” one told researchers.

When air conditioning was turned on, it was often left on full blast into the cooler months, making it so frigid that ice formed inside cell windows.

Other formerly incarcerated people described being awakened in the night by wildfire smoke and stuffing clothing over vents and windows to keep ash out of their cell. Some had to wait outside in long lines in triple-digit temperatures to get their medications.

“I remember people just burning,” recalled one 46-year-old man, describing his cell mate. “He was out there all day. And he was so purple, and he had edema on his head so bad you could put your thumb in his forehead, and it would just stay.”

‘Cruel and unusual punishment’

Due to lack of emergency planning, prisoners in other states have been infamously left behind when natural disasters hit.

In 2005, during Hurricane Katrina, thousands were locked inside the Orleans Parish Prison for days, submerged in deep, sewage-tainted water and without power. In 2020, during wildfires in California, a wildfire came within a few miles of two state prisons. While neighbors were evacuated, prisoners were left in place.

Colorado prisons have been evacuated at least two times: In 2013, a fire forced evacuation of 900 people from Territorial Correctional Facility in Cañon City. In Barron’s interviews, a person evacuated that day described it as “chaos.” In May 2023, hundreds at the Delta Correctional Center were evacuated due to the threat of flooding.

Dashti said that, as an engineer, she has been horrified to learn of what she equates to “cruel and unusual punishment” in U.S. prisons. She hopes the findings will encourage governments to update building codes and policies to ensure that facilities are more resilient and humane in the face of more frequent and severe natural hazards expected as a result of climate change. 

“But we can’t simply engineer out way out of the problem,” she said. 

The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world, imprisoning 700 out of every 100,000 people, compared to 115 out of 100,000 for its peer nations. In Colorado alone, about 31,000 people are currently behind bars. 

Dashti, Barron and their interdisciplinary research team believe more support should also be provided for education, mental health care, public housing and other means to keep people from committing crimes or help rehabilitate them when they do. 

Some prisons should be closed, they argue.

“It’s not enough to say we’ll just retrofit and add air conditioning,” said Barron. “We need to stop putting so many people in jail.”

Other co-authors on the Natural Hazards Review paper include: Postdoctoral Associate Sara Glade, environmental design student Caleb Schmitz, Environmental Design Associate Professor Shawhin Roudbari, engineering professors Abbie Liel and Shelly Miller, and Phaedra Pezzullo, associate professor in the Department of Communication.

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JOURNAL

Natural Hazards Review

DOI

10.1061/NHREFO.NHENG-1556 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

ARTICLE TITLE

Hazards and Incarceration Facilities: Evaluating Facility-Level Exposure to Floods, Wildfires, Extreme Heat, and Landslides in Colorado