Some of the most important work UC Merced’s public health department does is in the area of environmental health, which involves monitoring, understanding and/or mitigating factors in the environment that affect human health and disease. Our faculty and students are actively involved in multi-disciplinary research addressing the adverse health effects of leading environmental hazards in the San Joaquin Valley, including air and water pollution as well as climate-change related health threats such as wildfires and extreme temperatures.
Below are some highlights of this vital research:
Asa Bradman, chair of the public health department, has launched a mobile air quality laboratory to study the effects of vehicle emissions on public health, funded through a $1.2 million state grant. The mobile lab will provide a health assessment clinic; deploy community air quality monitoring networks in Stockton and Fresno by installing 125 new PurpleAir monitors; and establish a permanent community-university air quality and clinical research center (the San Joaquin Valley Center for Community Air Assessment and Injustice Reduction, or SJV CC-AIR) at UC Merced. SJV CC-AIR will be hosting a regional conference on “Air Quality and Health” on October 17-18, 2024, where community partners, researchers, and local government will gather to discuss current research and strategies to mitigate health risks related to pollution in the region.
Bradman is also collaborating with multiple partners, including UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco, Little Manila Rising, and the Central California Asthma Collaborative, on studies to assess air and chemical exposures in Stockton and Fresno. These communities struggle both with high air pollution and economic, social, and health inequities. The studies will collect urine samples to assess exposures to air pollutants and chemicals, such as metabolites of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds, among children and families living in these cities. Children participants are from classrooms at a Stockton school where the project will also evaluate how well air filtration reduces exposures, which will inform similar efforts across the state.
In a project with Professor Kristina Hoyer in the School of Natural Sciences, Bradman is collecting dust samples from a network of 10 locations in the San Joaquin Valley. The researchers will extract the DNA from the dust samples and sequence for bacterial and fungi species, including Valley Fever. This project will ultimately help assess the spatial distribution of airborne pathogens in the community and its relation to health.
Professor Sandie Ha’s research centers around understanding the nexus between climate change and health, with a particular focus on the perinatal and early-life period. Her ultimate goal is to use her research to inform policies and interventions that have health implications for communities in the San Joaquin Valley and beyond.
Ha’s research has demonstrated that health impacts of air pollution and climate change-related events (e.g., extreme temperatures) are far beyond respiratory and cardiovascular outcomes as previously acknowledged. Her work stimulated important discussions around the profound impacts of climate change on reproductive and perinatal health and have informed policy decisions to recognize pregnant people as a vulnerable population to climate change.
Funded by the city of Fresno, Ha recently completed a Health Impact Assessment in Fresno, CA in collaboration with community partners and the UC Merced Community and Labor Center. The project involved a comprehensive analysis of population-based data and a community-based survey. Her findings will be published soon and will provide critical information related to the health impacts of air pollution and proximity to air pollution sources (e.g., truck routes) in Fresno. These findings will directly inform Fresno City’s Truck Reroute Study, which aims to identify, analyze, and evaluate potential strategies that the city of Fresno might implement, in cooperation with freight-impacted communities, to abate truck impacts (e.g., illness, pollution, noise, etc.).
Meanwhile, working with faculty from the schools of Natural Sciences and Engineering, Ha is examining how different land repurposing efforts affect air pollution, extreme heat events, and ultimately, public health in California. Land repurposing is an effort, under the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, aimed at addressing the unsustainable water use in California. While it may help reduce water use, its secondary effects on other environmental aspects and public health are not known. This study will inform the state on its investment and efforts to reduce climate change impacts. This project was funded by the 2023 UC Merced Climate Action Research Seed Fund Competition.
Professor Alec Chan-Golston’s environmental health research focuses on the relationship between air pollution and health. A recent article examined the relationship between COVID-19 and traffic-related air pollution in Los Angeles. This work is currently being expanded to nitrogen dioxide exposures near nursing homes with doctoral student Fabiola Perez-Lua. As a biostatistician, he has been and continues to be involved with many other projects, including wildfire in California and estimating mosquito distributions. He is also actively developing novel statistical methods that will help us analyze air pollution and other environmental health data more effectively.
Lecturer Gilda Zarate-Gonzalez’s recent work estimates the health and economic costs of adverse health outcomes related to air pollution in the San Joaquin Valley. Zarate-Gonzalez has examined emergency department and hospital records to determine the effects of air pollution on respiratory health outcomes.
