Our Newsletter
The UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center (EHSC) publishes a newsletter for scientists, community partners and the general public focusing on the work our Center is doing to solve environmental health problems. The EHSC Director writes an introduction in the newsletter, orienting readers to the broader challenges scientists face, which you can find below.
Director's Message - April 2022
Making a difference creatively
April 2022
This issue of the UC Davis Environmental Health Sciences Center (EHSC) Newsletter is dedicated to Jennifer Biddle, our digital strategist, who will be leaving us this month. During her four years with us, she worked tirelessly on an amazing array of activities to strengthen the outreach for environmental health and expand the visibility of research, community connections, and collaborations of EHSC.
Through her efforts: Our website was reconstructed and optimized to vastly grow the traffic coming to it; an Emmy-award winning documentary filmmaker created several videos ranging from ~10 minutes to an hour long documentary of the 2017 Northern California wildfires that PBS aired for two years; social media platforms were harnessed for recruitment into online surveys about experiences in wildfires and later, COVID; community-based research was documented and highlighted; and the accomplishments of our EHSC scholars, pilot awardees, and members were promoted through social media, our website, digital campaigns, and other outreach.
Throughout the last four years, Jennifer translated the science of our EHSC into language for a broad public, spearheaded campaigns and drew upon UC Davis Health experts to serve as a resource; and created beautiful yet informative reports to give back to organizations with which we collaborated.
In this introduction to the Newsletter, I do a whirlwind review of a few salient aspects of the current work by EHSC, below, and underscore some of Jennifer Biddle’s key contributions to our Center’s research, public education, and service to communities.
Climate Change
In 2014, the AR5 (Fifth Assessment Report) from the IPCC (Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change characterized the health impacts, worldwide:
“…the worldwide burden of human ill-health from climate change is relatively small…and not well quantified. However, there has been increased heat-related mortality and decreased cold-related mortality in some regions as a result of warming (medium confidence). Local changes in temperature and rainfall have altered the distribution of some water- borne illnesses and disease vectors (medium confidence).”
Over the eight years since that report, extreme weather events have become commonplace throughout the world. For the Western U.S., wildfires are now a regular and predominant climate pattern that occurs not only in the late summer and early fall, as was true for most of the last half century, but nearly or actually every month of the year. Northern California has set new records for wildfire- and hence climate change- related destructiveness of infrastructure, and fatalities.
In the winter of 2018, EHSC launched WHAT-Now-CA? (Wildfires and Health: Assessing the Toll in Northern California”), a study of households affected by the 2017 wildfires, and in spring, Jennifer worked to spread the word using wildfire-related Facebook groups. Within a matter of weeks, enrollment tripled, and as a result, over 2,000 households participated. This was repeated in 2019 for the 2018 fires (e.g., Camp Fire, Carr Fire, and Thomas Fire), and for the B-SAFE study (“Bio-Specimens And Fire Effects”), which enrolls women who were pregnant during or shortly after wildfires.
Today, it is not surprising that the tentative tone of the previous report is gone in the recently released AR6 IPCC Report, which presents a more stark and definitive assessment of the health impacts of climate change:
“Climate change has adversely affected physical health of people globally (very high confidence) and mental health of people in the assessed regions (very high confidence)…
In all regions extreme heat events have resulted in human mortality and morbidity (very high confidence). The occurrence of climate-related food-borne and water-borne diseases has increased (very high confidence). The incidence of vector-borne diseases has increased from range expansion and/or increased reproduction of disease vectors (high confidence)… higher temperatures, increased rain and flooding have increased the occurrence of diarrheal diseases, including cholera (very high confidence) and other gastrointestinal infections (high confidence).
In assessed regions, some mental health challenges are associated with increasing temperatures (high confidence), trauma from weather and climate extreme events (very high confidence), and loss of livelihoods and culture (high confidence). Increased exposure to wildfire smoke, atmospheric dust, and aeroallergens have been associated with climate-sensitive cardiovascular and respiratory distress (high confidence).“
(emphasis (bold-type) added).
Jennifer’s first big project for us put us in touch with Paige Bierma, an established documentary filmmaker, who created, with assistance from Jennifer, “Waking Up to Wildfires,” an hour-long journey into lives that were altered: firefighters, people whose lives were saved by them, a woman struggling with asthma, an immigrant family who lost their home and everything in it. Jennifer also turned the film into a web series, and PBS aired a 30-minute version, which was syndicated nationally.
The challenge of mitigating, i.e., slowing the global temperature rise, and ultimately reversing it by the primary means available—reducing greenhouse gas emissions—is the first imperative. This can be tackled by individual level actions (reduce your meat consumption; change your mode of transportation by bicycling, walking, using public transportation, or driving a hybrid or electric vehicle; install solar panels, etc.). But most effectively, collectively working to change our cities, our universities, our hospitals, and all our institutions—so as to reduce and end the use of fossil fuels as an energy source, and thereby lower and eliminate GHG emissions.
The second challenge is adaptation, i.e., changing the way we do things, orienting the social and political infrastructure to build resilience and minimize the harms to health and well-being. Recognizing that risks for the near-term (the next 20 years) are unambiguous, and that much can and must be done to minimize them, is just the first step. Unfortunately, we have already pushed the planet too far, and these risks to human civilization and to ecosystems cannot be avoided (IPCC AR6, “Risks, Adaptation and Vulnerability”).
Nevertheless, concerted and coordinated efforts can not only slow global warming but the creativity of groups of people dedicated to a single purpose can be a powerful force, and the earlier these efforts get underway, the more impact they will have in reducing projected “losses and damages.” Losses can mean homes, employment, and lives shortened. Damages can be to structures, including homes, hospitals, libraries, workplaces, but also health impairments, mental and physical. The slogan “Think Globally. Act Locally” is entirely appropriate, when faced with a colossal threat.
In that vein, there is a “Fossil-Free UCD” movement: a group of faculty, students and staff met with Chancellor May, a few months ago, and from that meeting, the Chancellor tasked the UC Davis Campus Advisory Committee on Sustainability with developing a plan by 2023 to achieve a Fossil Free UCD by 2030. Stay tuned!
Highlights from our Center’s research
Michele La Merrill is senior author on a newly published paper on in vitro studies of per- and poly-fluoralkyl substances (PFAS’s): results demonstrate that several PFAS act to inhibit human androgen receptor, and have anti-androgenic activity at low levels. Read about the research here.
Hong Ji and Lisa Miller, along with other co-authors, recently reported that rhesus macaques who were exposed in early life to wildfires had DNA methylation changes near genes regulating immune and nervous systems, as well as genes involved in asthma, COPD, and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Read about the research here.
Julia Mouat and Janine LaSalle review the literature suggesting multi-generational influences on neurodevelopment, with a focus on autism, and suggests that beyond pure genetic inheritance, epigenetic inheritance via DNA methylation, may play a role. Read about the research here.
Deborah Bennett, Rebecca Schmidt, and Irva Hertz-Picciotto are authors on a report from the ECHO (Environmental Influences on Child Health Outcomes) consortium, which found that gestational diabetes and maternal obesity were associated with greater autism-related traits, as measured on the Social Responsiveness Scales, including in children without a diagnosis of ASD. Read about the research here.
Benjamin Laufer, Janine LaSalle, and Rebecca Schmidt published results on PCB-exposed placentas, which contain differentially methylated regions (DMRs) that overlap with fetal brain DMRs associated with neurodevelopmental disorders. Read about the research here.
COVID-19
EHSC engaged in multiple projects related to COVID-19. With supplemental funding, a broad program of testing in four counties with large Hispanic populations was initiated, and between February of 2020 and the present, conducted over 22,000 tests. Known as ÓRALE, this project was a collaboration of UC Davis Health with ten community-based organizations, Lideres Campesinas, Central California Environmental Justice Network, West Modesto Commuity Coalition, Madera Commuity Coalition for Justice, RISE Inc., Health Education Council, the Mexican Consulate-Sacramento, Radio Bilingüe, California Rural Legal Assistance Fund, Centro Binacional Para El Desarollo Indigena Oaxaqueño, and Building Healthy Communities-Fresno.
UCD clinical research coordinators, lab technicians, a statistical analyst and a communications specialist were hired, and worked alongside community educators and promotoras, at each test site. The test sites were designed to overcome obstacles to testing, such as language barriers, lack of test sites in rural areas and other largely Hispanic communities, lack of access to online registration for testing, lack of health insurance, and congregate housing that makes isolation difficult or impossible.
Most of the hired staff were bilingual and bicultural, tests were free and no insurance was needed. Tests were administered on a first-come, first-served basis, and the Abbott Binax antigen test was used to identify positive cases in the community. Separate lines were used for those who were asymptomatic vs. symptomatic.
Besides education about the test itself, the UCD team conducted post-test counseling, and provided information about services offered in each of the respective counties. An ÓRALE website was set up where weekly test dates and locations were posted. Team members also created Tiktok and other videos to answer questions, counter misinformation and provide evidence-based recommendations.
For much of the first year and into the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, workplaces were a primary locus for spread of the virus. Therefore, EHSC put out a survey to understand the impacts of the pandemic on both the general population and for specific workers.
EHSC’s team developed partnerships with a few worker organizations that promoted the survey among their membership, including the California Domestic Workers’ Coalition (CDWC), Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), and the Graton Day Laborers. Our report to the CDWC spotlights the difficult and demeaning circumstances under which these workers labored on the frontline during the pandemic, with, at times, little protection and virtually no recognition.
As the CDWC was in the midst of a major campaign for domestic workers to achieve some basic worker rights, with legislation being introduced and discussed in both houses of State representatives—the Senate and the Assembly—Jennifer engaged with filmmaker Paige Bierma again to create “Dignidad,” a film documenting domestic workers' struggles, and the campaign as it unfolded.
Another report is being produced for SEIU-UHW.
Community-Based Participatory Research
EHSC's Community Engagement Core (CEC) has a broad program designed to build bridges and foster collaborations between UCD scientists and community stakeholders. A Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee (CSTAC) meets regularly and each year provides a list of priority EH issues that they believe UCD scientists may have expertise to offer. Major issues have included pesticides, air pollution, and water contamination.
In 2018, the CEC organized a bus tour of key environmental justice sites in several communities of the San Joaquin Valley, where UCD faculty, staff, students, and post-docs met with community leaders and listened to their on-the-ground struggles for a healthy environment. Again, Jennifer brought Paige Bierma to film these interactions and the stories that were shared, helping to produce a video about the 2018 Environmental Justice Tour.
Clare Cannon, an early stage investigator from the Department of Human Ecology developed a partnership with the Migrant Center in Knight’s Landing, and from her experiences, wrote an article that is both a case study and a handbook, “Towards Convergence: How to Do Transdisciplinary Environmental Health Disparities Research” published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. Cannon's work is featured in another film, due in large part to Jennifer Biddle, who played a central role in producing: “Air, Water, Blood: The Power of Community-Engaged Research.”
Another short video, which Jennifer Biddle created herself, features the work of Jane Sellen of Californians for Pesticide Reform, and their efforts to ban chlorpyrifos and other toxic pesticides that are associated with higher risks of neurodevelopmental deficits in children exposed prenatally. Watch this 3 -minute social media video—part of an interview Jennifer did with Jane called “Chlorpyrifos ban: Why it’s so important for kids.”
Our website now draws over 50,000 viewers each year—up from almost nothing four years ago—and this number continues to rise. Jennifer has been central to this growth in readership, providing a broad vision of how the Center can reach a larger audience, and how we can educate beyond our own students and post-doctoral trainees.
Thank you Jennifer for all you have done for the Center, and we wish you the very best!!
— Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto
To read more director updates from Dr. Irva Hertz-Picciotto visit our EHSC Newsletter page.