VIDEO AVAILABLE

The health effects of traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) continue to be of important public health interest. Assessing exposure to TRAP is challenging because TRAP is a complex mixture of particulate matter and gaseous pollutants and exhibits high spatial and temporal variability. Following its well-cited 2010 critical review, the Health Effects Institute (HEI) appointed a new expert panel to systematically evaluate the epidemiological evidence regarding the associations between long-term exposure to TRAP and selected adverse health outcomes. The panel used a systematic approach to search the literature, select studies for inclusion in the review, assess study quality, summarize results, and reach conclusions about the confidence in the evidence.

This webinar will:

• Discuss patterns of exposure to traffic-related air pollution around the world, and which populations are most exposed to TRAP
• Review the health impacts of increased exposure to long-term exposure to TRAP
• Discuss strengths and weaknesses of the evidence, and future research needs

About the speaker:

Hanna Boogaard has more than 15 years of experience in air pollution epidemiology. She is a Consultant Principal Scientist at the Health Effects Institute (HEI) in Boston, MA, an independent research organization with balanced funding from the US Environmental Protection Agency and motor vehicle industry. She received a PhD in 2012 in air pollution epidemiology from Utrecht University, Netherlands. She studied health effects of traffic-related air pollution, and the effectiveness of traffic policy measures. At HEI, she is involved in research oversight and review of studies investigating the health effects of air pollution and studies evaluating the effectiveness of interventions to improve air quality and public health. In addition, she is involved in developing and overseeing new research programs on non-tailpipe traffic emissions, studies assessing adverse health effects of long-term exposure to low levels of ambient air pollution, and studies on health effects of traffic-related air pollution. Furthermore, she is working very closely with an expert HEI panel to systematically evaluate the evidence for the associations of long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution with selected health outcomes. She holds a MSc in Epidemiology and Environmental Health Sciences (2005) from Maastricht University, Netherlands.

She has been advisor of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, World Health Organization, Health Canada, and other national and international bodies. She is associate editor for Environment International and on the Editorial Review Board for Environmental Health Perspectives. She is co-chair of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology (ISEE) Europe Chapter, and member of the ISEE Policy Committee.

 

VIDEO AVAILABLE

 

For two decades, the UNICEF Report Card series has released a report every two years that reveal the state of children and youth across high-income countries. This year’s Report Card, which will be released globally on May 24, takes a new focus on children’s environment. It compares rich countries’ environmental impacts on young people’s health and broader well-being.

Following the release of the report, on May 25 at 12:00 p.m. (ET), join us for an echo event, where three researchers and users of CANUE data will dive deeper into how Canadian children’s exposures to greenspace, playability and air pollution affect their health and wellbeing.

This webinar will explore how each of these exposures impact children’s health, and what could be done to ensure more children have access to greenspace, playable communities and are exposed to less air pollution.

About the speakers:

Emily Gemmell is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health. Rooted in a human rights framework, her research focuses on the ways in which urban form influences child health behaviours and how cities can support health and social connection by integrating kids’ perspectives and needs into the design of neighbourhood spaces. She is currently developing a high-level, evidence-based geospatial metric to assess neighbourhood playability across Canadian urban centers and creating a scalable, computer vision model for assessing child and parent perceptions of neighbourhood environments for outdoor play.

 

 

Ingrid Jarvis is a PhD candidate in the Department of Forest and Conservation Sciences at the University of British Columbia. She holds a BA in Psychology and a BSc in Natural Resources Conservation with Honours. Her CIHR-funded thesis examines how environmental exposures, including green and blue spaces, influence human health and development across the life course among Metro Vancouver residents. Her research focuses on early childhood and adult exposure to surrounding urban environments in relation to a range of health indicators. Her work takes an interdisciplinary approach by applying geospatial and epidemiological analyses that combine administrative, survey, and GIS data.

 

Eric Lavigne is a Senior Epidemiologist with the Water & Air Quality Bureau of Health Canada and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Ottawa. Eric’s research investigates how children’s health is affected by ambient air pollution and climate change. Much of this work is based on epidemiology, biostatistics, and environmental sciences. The research is designed to be policy-relevant and contribute to well-informed decision-making to better protect human health.