Healthy soils for food system resiliency

Urban gardens produce a growing portion of food consumed in U.S. cities and throughout the world. Spreading out food production means less reliance on centralized food industries, making the food system less vulnerable to external stresses brought about by climate change and other challenges. Yet, urban food production may occur in soils that need some revitalization before they produce safe, healthy food. Some urban soils contain a record of poor environmental practices in the form of accumulated toxins like heavy metals. Certain heavy metals can be toxic to plants, enter plant parts that people consume, or they can affect a person's health through direct ingestion, dermal contact, or breathing in contaminated dust or soil. Gardeners often seek solutions to problems proactively; the goal of this work is to provide the proactive gardener tools that can be used to assess the potential for toxins to be present, give suitable methods for detecting heavy metals, and provide guidance on making appropriate plans based on these findings. This work investigates whether land use and environmental histories for a garden plot scaled up to a region can predict which heavy metals are present in the garden plot. Case studies are presented for Lawrence, Kansas including a broad environmental history of the town and site specific land use histories for ten urban gardens. Soil samples were collected and elemental analyses were performed using x-ray fluorescence. These results were used to demonstrate that predictions based on Lawrence land use and environmental histories were effective for arsenic, copper, lead, and zinc, but cadmium, chromium, mercury, and nickel were difficult to predict. Soil organic carbon was determined for a portion of the samples and a model for estimating organic carbon based on soil color is provided. A discussion of the policy landscape for urban gardening in Lawrence, Kansas and Flint, Michigan provided material for a tool for determining what policy barriers may exist in any given city, and actions a gardener can take to address these barriers. Finally, a decision support tool was prepared based on lessons learned from the case study that will help gardeners gather relevant information, analyze the information, and make appropriate decisions in land management. Addition of organic matter is lauded as the simplest urban soil treatment that addresses many toxins as well as increasing soil tilth, nutrient status, and water holding capacity. Because urban gardening holds great potential for adding resiliency to the food system, urban soil health must be improved to protect public health

An examination of urban heat island characteristics in a global climate model

This is the publisher's version, also available electronically from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/joc.2201/abstract;jsessionid=8D053A7D1E2894F4658DDA991ACAB056.f04t03.A parameterization for urban surfaces has been incorporated into the Community Land Model as part of the Community Climate System Model. The parameterization allows global simulation of the urban environment, in particular the temperature of cities and thus the urban heat island. Here, the results from climate simulations for the AR4 A2 emissions scenario are presented. Present-day annual mean urban air temperatures are up to 4 °C warmer than surrounding rural areas. Averaged over all urban areas resolved in the model, the heat island is 1.1 °C, which is 46% of the simulated mid-century warming over global land due to greenhouse gases. Heat islands are generally largest at night as evidenced by a larger urban warming in minimum than maximum temperature, resulting in a smaller diurnal temperature range compared to rural areas. Spatial and seasonal variability in the heat island is caused by urban to rural contrasts in energy balance and the different responses of these surfaces to the seasonal cycle of climate. Under simulation constraints of no urban growth and identical urban/rural atmospheric forcing, the urban to rural contrast decreases slightly by the end of the century. This is primarily a different response of rural and urban areas to increased long-wave radiation from a warmer atmosphere. The larger storage capacity of urban areas buffers the increase in long-wave radiation such that urban night-time temperatures warm less than rural. Space heating and air conditioning processes add about 0.01 W m−2 of heat distributed globally, which results in a small increase in the heat island. The significant differences between urban and rural surfaces demonstrated here imply that climate models need to account for urban surfaces to more realistically evaluate the impact of climate change on people in the environment where they live. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Societ

Do high-risk medicines alerts influence practice?

Background: Medicine-related adverse events are prevalent, costly and mostly preventable. The High Risk Medicines Working Party (Victoria) developed and distributed three highrisk medicines alerts &ndash; wrong route of administration of oral medicines, subcutaneous insulin and unfractionated heparin &ndash; and accompanying audit tools in 2008 and 2009.Aims: To determine the impact of the three high-risk medicines alerts on Victorian health services; to assess the clinical relevance and utility of the audit tools; to identify barriers to implementing recommendations; and to obtain feedback and suggestions for future alert topics.Method: A cross-sectional survey was undertaken from 6 to 31 July 2009 using an online questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed to 90 metropolitan, regional and rural public health services in Victoria and approximately 200 members of the Quality Use of Medicines Network (Victoria).Results: Most of the 90 respondents were pharmacists (53%) and nurses (31%). 53 (59%) respondents reported making changes as a result of receiving the high-risk medicines alerts &ndash; 21 (40%) concerned the wrong route of administration, 12 (23%) subcutaneous insulin and 7 (13%) unfractionated heparin. Barriers to implementation included time constraints, inadequate staff and resources, excessive paperwork and competing priorities. A minority of respondents indicated some alerts were not relevant to small rural services. Suggestions forimproving the audit tools included making them less labour intensive, enabling electronic responses and ensuring their distribution is coordinated with other medicine-related tools.Conclusion: High-risk medicines alerts and the accompanying audit tools facilitated change but there were some barriers to their implementation, such as time and resource constraints. Not all alerts and audit tools were relevant to all health services.<br /