DEVELOPING ORGANIC FARMING IN NORWAY THROUGH SYSTEMIC ACTION RESEARCH

A systemic action research approach to gain insight into the present situation of the agroecosystem, to envision scenarios, and to accomplish workable outcomes is performed. This process is to be accomplished in a participatory way that empowers stakeholders to continue the learning process and system development in an ecologically friendly, socio-culturally feasible and economically viable way

Long-term health effects of the Eyjafjallajökull volcanic eruption: a prospective cohort study in 2010 and 2013.

To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked Files. This article is open access.To examine the long-term development of physical and mental health following exposure to a volcanic eruption.Population-based prospective cohort study.In spring 2010, the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupted. Data were collected at 2 time points: in 2010 and 2013.Adult residents in areas close to the Eyjafjallajökull volcano (N=1096), divided according to exposure levels, and a non-exposed sample (n=475), with 80% participation rate in 2013.Physical symptoms in the previous year (chronic) and previous month (recent), and psychological distress (General Health Questionnaire-12-item version, GHQ-12), perceived stress (Perceived Stress Scale, PSS-4) and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (Primary Care PTSD, PC-PTSD).In the exposed group, certain symptoms were higher in 2013 than in 2010, for example, morning phlegm during winter (OR 2.14; 95% CI 1.49 to 3.06), skin rash/eczema (OR 2.86; 95% CI 1.76 to 4.65), back pain (OR 1.45; 95% CI 1.03 to 2.05) and insomnia (OR 1.53; 95% CI 1.01 to 2.30), in addition to a higher prevalence of regular use of certain medications (eg, for asthma (OR 2.80; 95% CI 1.01 to 7.77)). PTSD symptoms decreased between 2010 and 2013 (OR 0.33; 95% CI 0.17 to 0.61), while the prevalence of psychological distress and perceived stress remained similar. In 2013, the exposed group showed a higher prevalence of various respiratory symptoms than did the non-exposed group, such as wheezing without a cold (high exposure OR 2.35; 95% CI 1.27 to 4.47) and phlegm (high exposure OR 2.81; 95% CI 1.48 to 5.55), some symptoms reflecting the degree of exposure (eg, nocturnal chest tightness (medium exposed OR 3.09; 95% CI 1.21 to 10.46; high exposed OR 3.42; 95% CI 1.30 to 11.79)).The findings indicate that people exposed to a volcanic eruption, especially those most exposed, exhibit increased risk of certain symptoms 3-4 years after the eruption.The government in Iceland, Nordic Centre of Excellence for Resilience and Societal Security—NORDRESS, which is funded by the Nordic Societal Security Program (grant number 68825)

Emergency hospital visits in association with volcanic ash, dust storms and other sources of ambient particles: a time-series study in Reykjavík, Iceland.

To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked Files. This article is open access.Volcanic ash contributed significantly to particulate matter (PM) in Iceland following the eruptions in Eyjafjallajökull 2010 and Grímsvötn 2011. This study aimed to investigate the association between different PM sources and emergency hospital visits for cardiorespiratory causes from 2007 to 2012. Indicators of PM10 sources; "volcanic ash", "dust storms", or "other sources" (traffic, fireworks, and re-suspension) on days when PM10 exceeded the daily air quality guideline value of 50 µg/m3 were entered into generalized additive models, adjusted for weather, time trend and co-pollutants. The average number of daily emergency hospital visits was 10.5. PM10 exceeded the air quality guideline value 115 out of 2191 days; 20 days due to volcanic ash, 14 due to dust storms (two days had both dust storm and ash contribution) and 83 due to other sources. High PM10 levels from volcanic ash tended to be significantly associated with the emergency hospital visits; estimates ranged from 4.8% (95% Confidence Interval (CI): 0.6, 9.2%) per day of exposure in unadjusted models to 7.3% (95% CI: -0.4, 15.5%) in adjusted models. Dust storms were not consistently associated with daily emergency hospital visits and other sources tended to show a negative association. We found some evidence indicating that volcanic ash particles were more harmful than particles from other sources, but the results were inconclusive and should be interpreted with caution.Icelandic Centre for Research PhD fun

Legitimacy, communication and leadership in the Turnaround game

We study the effectiveness of leaders for inducing coordinated organizational change to a more efficient equilibrium, i.e., a turnaround. We compare communication from leaders to incentive increases and also compare the effectiveness of randomly selected and elected leaders. While all interventions yield shifts to more efficient equilibria, communication from leaders has a greater effect than incentives. Moreover, leaders who are elected by followers are significantly better at improving their group's outcome than randomly selected ones. The improved effectiveness of elected leaders results from sending more performance-relevant messages. Our results are evidence that the way in which leaders are selected affects their legitimacy and the degree to which they influence followers. Finally, we observed that a combination of factors- incentive increases and elected leaders-yield near universal turnarounds to full efficiency

Increased respiratory morbidity associated with exposure to a mature volcanic plume from a large Icelandic fissure eruption.

The 2014-15 Holuhraun eruption in Iceland was the largest fissure eruption in over 200 years, emitting prodigious amounts of gas and particulate matter into the troposphere. Reykjavík, the capital area of Iceland (250 km from eruption site) was exposed to air pollution events from advection of (i) a relatively young and chemically primitive volcanic plume with a high sulphur dioxide gas (SO2) to sulphate PM (SO42-) ratio, and (ii) an older and chemically mature volcanic plume with a low SO2/SO42- ratio. Whereas the advection and air pollution caused by the primitive plume were successfully forecast and forewarned in public advisories, the mature plume was not. Here, we show that exposure to the mature plume is associated with an increase in register-measured health care utilisation for respiratory disease by 23% (95% CI 19.7-27.4%) and for asthma medication dispensing by 19.3% (95% CI 9.6-29.1%). Absence of public advisories is associated with increases in visits to primary care medical doctors and to the hospital emergency department. We recommend that operational response to volcanic air pollution considers both primitive and mature types of plumes

Severe volcanic SO exposure and respiratory morbidity in the Icelandic population - a register study.

To access publisher's full text version of this article, please click on the hyperlink in Additional Links field or click on the hyperlink at the top of the page marked DownloadBackground: The Holuhraun volcanic eruption September 2014 to February 2015 emitted large amounts of sulfur dioxide (SO2). The aim of this study was to determine the association between volcanic SO2 gases on general population respiratory health some 250 km from the eruption site, in the Icelandic capital area. Methods: Respiratory health outcomes were: asthma medication dispensing (AMD) from the Icelandic Medicines Register, medical doctor consultations in primary care (PCMD) and hospital emergency department visits (HED) in Reykjavík (population: 215000) for respiratory disease from 1 January 2010 to 31 December 2014. The associations between daily counts of health events and daily mean SO2 concentration and high SO2 levels (24-h mean SO2 > 125 μg/m3) were analysed using generalized additive models. Results: After the eruption began, AMD was higher than before (129.4 vs. 158.4 individuals per day, p < 0.05). For PCMD and HED, there were no significant differences between the number of daily events before and after the eruption (142.2 vs 144.8 and 18.3 vs 17.5, respectively). In regression analysis adjusted for other pollutants, SO2 was associated with estimated increases in AMD by 0.99% (95% CI 0.39-1.58%) per 10 μg/m3 at lag 0-2, in PCMD for respiratory causes 1.26% (95% CI 0.72-1.80%) per 10 μg/m3 SO2 at lag 0-2, and in HED by 1.02% (95% CI 0.02-2.03%) per 10 μg/m3 SO2 at lag 0-2. For days over the health limit, the estimated increases were 10.9% (95% CI 2.1-19.6%), 17.2% (95% CI 10.0-24.4%) for AMD and PCMD. Dispensing of short-acting medication increased significantly by 1.09% (95% CI 0.49-1.70%), and PCMD for respiratory infections and asthma and COPD diagnoses and increased significantly by 1.12% (95% CI 0.54-1.71%) and 2.08% (1.13-3.04%). Conclusion: High levels of volcanic SO2 are associated with increases in dispensing of AMD, and health care utilization in primary and tertiary care. Individuals with prevalent respiratory disease may be particularly susceptible. Keywords: Atmospheric transport; Epidemiology; Public health; Respiratory disease; Volcanic eruption.Icelandic Ministry of Healt

Joint effect of heat and air pollution on mortality in 620 cities of 36 countries

Background: The epidemiological evidence on the interaction between heat and ambient air pollution on mortality is still inconsistent. Objectives: To investigate the interaction between heat and ambient air pollution on daily mortality in a large dataset of 620 cities from 36 countries. Methods: We used daily data on all-cause mortality, air temperature, particulate matter ≤ 10 μm (PM10), PM ≤ 2.5 μm (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and ozone (O3) from 620 cities in 36 countries in the period 1995-2020. We restricted the analysis to the six consecutive warmest months in each city. City-specific data were analysed with over-dispersed Poisson regression models, followed by a multilevel random-effects meta-analysis. The joint association between air temperature and air pollutants was modelled with product terms between non-linear functions for air temperature and linear functions for air pollutants. Results: We analyzed 22,630,598 deaths. An increase in mean temperature from the 75th to the 99th percentile of city-specific distributions was associated with an average 8.9 % (95 % confidence interval: 7.1 %, 10.7 %) mortality increment, ranging between 5.3 % (3.8 %, 6.9 %) and 12.8 % (8.7 %, 17.0 %), when daily PM10 was equal to 10 or 90 μg/m3, respectively. Corresponding estimates when daily O3 concentrations were 40 or 160 μg/m3 were 2.9 % (1.1 %, 4.7 %) and 12.5 % (6.9 %, 18.5 %), respectively. Similarly, a 10 μg/m3 increment in PM10 was associated with a 0.54 % (0.10 %, 0.98 %) and 1.21 % (0.69 %, 1.72 %) increase in mortality when daily air temperature was set to the 1st and 99th city-specific percentiles, respectively. Corresponding mortality estimate for O3 across these temperature percentiles were 0.00 % (-0.44 %, 0.44 %) and 0.53 % (0.38 %, 0.68 %). Similar effect modification results, although slightly weaker, were found for PM2.5 and NO2. Conclusions: Suggestive evidence of effect modification between air temperature and air pollutants on mortality during the warm period was found in a global dataset of 620 cities.Funding: Massimo Stafoggia, Francesca K. de’ Donato, Masna Rai and Alexandra Schneider were partially supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Project Exhaustion (Grant ID: 820655). Jan Kyselý and Aleš Urban were supported by the Czech Science Foundation project (22-24920S). Joana Madureira was supported by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) (grant SFRH/BPD/115112/2016). Masahiro Hashizume was supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) as part of SICORP, Grant Number JPMJSC20E4. Noah Scovronick was supported by the NIEHS-funded HERCULES Center (P30ES019776). South African Data were provided by Statistics South Africa, which did not have any role in conducting the study. Antonio Gasparrini was supported by the Medical Research Council-UK (Grants ID: MR/V034162/1 and MR/R013349/1), the Natural Environment Research Council UK (Grant ID: NE/R009384/1), and the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Project Exhaustion (Grant ID: 820655).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio