Follow-up study of the treatment outcomes at a psychiatric trauma clinic for refugees

Purpose: To describe change in mental health after treatment with antidepressants and trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy. Methods: Patients receiving treatment at the Psychiatric Trauma Clinic for Refugees in Copenhagen completed self-ratings of level of functioning, quality of life, and symptoms of PTSD, depression, and anxiety before and after treatment. Changes in mental state and predictors of change were evaluated in a sample that all received well-described and comparable treatment. Results: 85 patients with PTSD or depression were included in the analysis. Significant improvement and effect size were observed on all rating scales (p-value <0.01 and Cohen’s d 45-0.68). Correlation analysis showed no association between severity of symptoms at baseline and the observed change. Conclusion: Despite methodological limitations, the finding of a significant improvement on all rating scales is important considering that previous follow-up studies of comparable patient populations have not found significant change in the patients’ condition after treatment

Evaluating source separation wastewater systems using traditional life cycle assessment and the planetary boundaries approach

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a commonly used method for assessing environmental impacts of systems, but cannot produce absolute values, i.e. a comparison with existing calculated values, which represents limits of what can be emitted into the environment. Therefore, absolute environmental sustainability assessments have been developed to assess impacts against the planetary boundaries (PBs) of the safe operating space for humanity. Since PB-LCAs are novel, it is useful to analyze both results from this method and conventional LCAs, something which has not been done before. This study applied both methods to two full-scale sanitation systems in the city of Helsingborg, Sweden. The current conventional system for handling wastewater with active sludge and food waste to biogas production was compared with the novel project H+ source separation system with three pipes (food waste, grey and black water) with increased resource recovery through anaerobic digestion, ammonia stripping, struvite precipitation and pelletization. The Planetary Boundaries LCA (PB-LCA) results showed that both systems exceeded eight of the assigned shares of PBs, including climate change and biogeochemical flows of nutrients. Traditional LCA (ReCiPe impact assessment) showed net savings for the H+ system in a few categories and considerable reductions in several impacts, e.g., global warming potential (GWP), stratospheric ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, and water consumption. In PB-LCA the H+ system gave additional impacts in both assessments for a few categories, mostly due to high consumption of chemicals in the ammonium stripping process used for nutrient recovery. In conclusion, the combined assessments highlight hotspots for process optimization in the H+ system. From a methodological standpoint, PB-LCA still needs improvements to better reflect avoided burdens and results from traditional LCA should be fully transparent and analyzed carefully. The assessment methods complement each other and can be combined to better represent environmental performances of systems

Environmental Performance of Hydrothermal Carbonization of Four Wet Biomass Waste Streams at Industry-Relevant Scales

[EN] Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC) of green waste, food waste, organic fraction of municipal solid waste (MSW), and digestate is assessed using life cycle assessment as a potential technology to treat biowaste. Water content of the biowaste and composition of the resulting hydrochar are important parameters influencing environmental performance. Hydrochar produced from green waste performs best and second best in respectively 2 and 10 out of 15 impact categories, including climate change, mainly due to low transportation needs of the biowaste and optimized pumping efficiency for the feedstock. By contrast, hydrochar produced from the organic fraction of MSW performs best in 6 impact categories, but has high potential impacts on human health and ecosystems caused by emissions of toxic elements through ash disposal. The greatest potential for environmental optimization for the HTC technology is in the use of heat and electricity with increasing plant size, but its overall environmental performance is largely influenced in a given geographic location by the incumbent waste management system that it replaces. Impact scores are within the range of existing alternative treatment options, suggesting that despite being relatively immature technology, and depending on the geographic location of the plant, HTC may be an attractive treatment option for biowaste.This research was funded by the European Commission under the seventh framework program; SME-2013-2: NEWAPP, grant agreement 605178.Owsianiak, M.; Ryberg, MW.; Renz, M.; Hitzl, M.; Hauschildt, MZ. (2016). Environmental Performance of Hydrothermal Carbonization of Four Wet Biomass Waste Streams at Industry-Relevant Scales. ACS Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering. 4(12):6783-6791. https://doi.org/10.1021/acssuschemeng.6b01732S6783679141