Predictability of Lead-210 in Surface Air Based on Multivariate Analysis

Dependence of the lead-210 activity concentration in surface air on meteorological variables and teleconnection indices is investigated using multivariate analysis, which gives the Boosted Decision Trees method as the most suitable for variable analysis. A mapped functional behaviour of the lead-210 activity concentration is further obtained, and used to test predictability of lead-210 in surface air. The results show an agreement between the predicted and measured values. The temporal evolution of the measured activities is satisfactorily matched by the prediction. The largest qualitative differences are obtained for winter months.3rd International Conference on Radiation and Applications in Various Fields of Research (RAD), Jun 08-12, 2015, Budva, Montenegr

Predictability of Lead-210 in Surface Air Based on Multivariate Analysis

Dependence of the lead-210 activity concentration in surface air on meteorological variables and teleconnection indices is investigated using multivariate analysis, which gives the Boosted Decision Trees method as the most suitable for variable analysis. A mapped functional behaviour of the lead-210 activity concentration is further obtained, and used to test predictability of lead-210 in surface air. The results show an agreement between the predicted and measured values. The temporal evolution of the measured activities is satisfactorily matched by the prediction. The largest qualitative differences are obtained for winter months.3rd International Conference on Radiation and Applications in Various Fields of Research (RAD), Jun 08-12, 2015, Budva, Montenegr

Characterization of human behavior in records of personal solar ultraviolet exposure records: poster

Exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation (UVR) has health benefits such as vitamin D production but excess exposure can lead to sunburn, cataracts and skin cancer Risk factors associated with sun exposure can be limited by using sun protection measures Personal sun exposure differs from ambient UVR as it is influenced by behavior, movement and bodily location which are an indication of individual exposure behavio

Exploring meteorological conditions and human health impacts during two dust storm events in Northern Cape province, South Africa: Findings and lessons learnt

Dust storms are meteorological hazards associated with several adverse health impacts including eye irritations, respiratory and cardiovascular disorders, and vehicular road accidents due to poor visibility. This study investigated relations between admissions from a large, public hospital that serves people living in Northern Cape and Free State provinces, South Africa during 2011 to 2017, and meteorological variables (temperature and air quality) during two dust storms, one in October 2014 (spring) and the second in January 2016 (summer), identified from the media as no repository of such events exists for South Africa. Distributed nonlinear lag analysis and wavelet transform analysis were applied to explore the relationships between hospital admissions for respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, eye irritation, and motor vehicle accidents; maximum temperature, and two air quality ‘proxy measures,’ aerosol optical depth and Ångström exponent, were used as groundbased air quality data were unavailable. Eye irritation was the most common dust-related hospital admission after both dust storm events. No statistically significant changes in admissions of interest occurred at the time of the two dust storm events, using either of the statistical methods. Several lessons were learnt. For this type of study, ground-based air quality and local wind data are required; alternative statistical methods of analysis should be considered; and a central dust storm repository would help analyze more than two events. Future studies in South Africa are needed to develop a baseline for comparison of future dust storm events and their impacts on human health.The South African Medical Research Councilhttps://www.mdpi.com/journal/atmosphereGeography, Geoinformatics and MeteorologySchool of Health Systems and Public Health (SHSPH

Exploring rural hospital admissions for diarrhoeal disease, malaria, pneumonia, and asthma in relation to temperature, rainfall and air pollution using wavelet transform analysis

BACKGROUND : Climate variables impact human health and in an era of climate change, there is a pressing need to understand these relationships to best inform how such impacts are likely to change. OBJECTIVES : This study sought to investigate time series of daily admissions from two public hospitals in Limpopo province in South Africa with climate variability and air quality. METHODS : We used wavelet transform cross-correlation analysis to monitor coincidences in changes of meteorological (temperature and rainfall) and air quality (concentrations of PM2.5 and NO2) variables with admissions to hospitals for gastrointestinal illnesses including diarrhoea, pneumonia-related diagnosis, malaria and asthma cases. We were interested to disentangle meteorological or environmental variables that might be associated with underlying temporal variations of disease prevalence measured through visits to hospitals. RESULTS : We found preconditioning of prevalence of pneumonia by changes in air quality and showed that malaria in South Africa is a multivariate event, initiated by co-occurrence of heat and rainfall. We provided new statistical estimates of time delays between the change of weather or air pollution and increase of hospital admissions for pneumonia and malaria that are addition to already known seasonal variations. We found that increase of prevalence of pneumonia follows changes in air quality after a time period of 10 to 15 days, while the increase of incidence of malaria follows the co-occurrence of high temperature and rainfall after a 30-day interval. DISCUSSION : Our findings have relevance for early warning system development and climate change adaptation planning to protect human health and well-being.The SAMRC; this research was carried out for the iDEWS (infectious Diseases Early-Warning System) project supported by SATREPS (Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development) Program of JICA (JAPAN International Cooperation Agency)/AMED (Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development) in Japan and the ACCESS (Alliance for Collaboration on Climate and Earth Systems Science) program of NRF (National Research Foundation) and DST (Department of Science and Technology in South Africa) as well as the Serbian Scientific Research Fund.http://www.elsevier.com/locate/scitotenvhj2022Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorolog

Characterization of human behavior in records of personal solar ultraviolet exposure records

We investigated scaling properties of measurements of personal exposure to solar ultraviolet radiation (pUVR) using the 2nd order detrended fluctuation analysis (DFA2) and the wavelet transform spectral analysis (WTS). Studies of pUVR are important to identify populations at-risk of excess and insufficient exposure given the negative and positive health impacts, respectively, of time spent in the sun. These very high frequency recordings are collected by electronic UVR dosimeters. We analyzed sun exposure patterns of school children in South Africa and construction workers and work site supervisors in New Zealand, and we found scaling behavior in all our data. The observed scaling changed from uncorrelated to long-range correlated with increasing duration of sun exposure. We found peaks in the WTS spectra that mark characteristic times in pUVR behavior, which may be connected to both human outside activity and natural (solar) daily cycles. We further hypothesized that the WT slope would be influenced by the duration of time that a person spends in continuum outside and addressed this hypothesis by using an experimental study approach. To that end we performed combined DFA2-WTS analysis on a subset of individual records taken on the same day under very similar outdoor conditions and used the theoretical superposition rule provided by systematic assessments of effects of trends and nonstationarities on DFA2 as a methodological mean to trace and subsequently model human behavioral patterns in pUVR time series

Identifying globally relevant learnings from Africa’s challenges and solutions to climate change and air pollution-related health impacts: a data science scoping review protocol

Peer reviewed: TrueAcknowledgements: We thank the National Institute for Health, Global Institute for Health Studies, Fogarty Division of International Science Policy, Planning and Evaluation and its partner organizations for initiating this project.IntroductionLeveraging data science could significantly advance the understanding of the health impacts of climate change and air pollution to meet health systems’ needs and improve public health in Africa. This scoping review will aim to identify and synthesise evidence on the use of data science as an intervention to address climate change and air pollution-related health challenges in Africa.Methods and analysisThe search strategy will be developed, and the search will be conducted in the Web of Science, Scopus, CAB Abstracts, MEDLINE and EMBASE electronic databases. We will also search the reference lists of eligible articles for additional records. We will screen titles, technical reports, abstracts and full texts and select studies reporting the use of data science in relation to the health effects and interventions associated with climate change and air pollution in Africa.Ethics and disseminationThere are no formal ethics requirements as we are not collecting primary data. Results, once published, will be disseminated via conferences and shared with policy-makers and public health, air pollution and climate change key stakeholders in Africa.</jats:sec