Spring 2013 Seminar Schedule.

Join us every Friday from 12-1pm in BUSM L210.

Date	Speaker	Seminar Title
January 18	Aaron Bernstein, MD, MPH Associate Director, Center for Global Health and the Environment, Harvard School of Public Health	The Importance of Biodiversity to Human Health
January 25	Noelle Selin, PhD MIT Engineering Systems Divsion and Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences	Health and Economic Impacts of Air Quality in a Changed Climate
February 1	J. Timmons Roberts, PhD Ittleson Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology, Brown University	Climate Justice: Looking Forwardpresented via AdobeConnect
February 8 Rescheduled for March 29	Ethan Butler, PhD Candidate Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Harvard University	Adapting Agriculture to a Warmer World
February 15	Judy Ou, MPH and James Watt, MSc BUSPH EH Doctoral Students	Judy Ou, MPH: Neighborhood Determinants of Community HealthJames Watt, MSc: Environmental Obesogens: Are They Bad to the Bone?
February 22	Henrik Selin, PhD Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston University	European Union Leadership on Climate Change Policy: Can It Be Sustained?
March 1	William Moomaw, PhD Director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University	Are We Negotiating the Wrong Climate Treaty?
March 8 Rescheduled for May 10	Frank Ackerman, PhD Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University	Climate Economics: What Do We Know About Unknown Risks?
March 15	No Seminar	Spring Break
March 22	Maria Harris, SM and Kate Crawford BUSPH EH Doctoral Students	Maria Harris, SM: Prenatal exposure to traffic-related pollution and childhood cognition in Project VivaKate Crawford, MS: New Bedford Harbor Superfund Site: Environmental Health Issues and Context
March 29	Ethan Butler, PhD Candidate Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Harvard University	Adapting Agriculture to a Warmer World
April 5	Emma Virginia, MPH and Lindsay Underhill, MPH BUSPH EH Doctoral Students	Emma Virginia, MPH: Adding Fuel to the Fire: The Science, Public Opinion, and Proposed Changes to California’s Technical Bulletins 133 & 117Lindsay Underhill, MPH: Traffic-related Air Pollution and Childhood Asthma in Lima, Peru
April 12Gijs van Seventer Lectureship Seminar	Jeffrey Stark Director of Research and Studies, Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability	Climate Change, Security, and Conflict: Preliminary Findings from Africa and Latin America on a Long-Term Challenge
April 19cancelled	Daniele Latagne, PhD Assistant Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Tufts University	Household Water Treatment: Successes and Lessons Learned in Building Resiliency
April 26	Colleen Makey, MPH BUSPH EH Doctoral Student	PBDEs and Thyroid Function in a Longitudinal Biomonitoring Study
May 10	Frank Ackerman, PhD Global Development and Environment Institute, Tufts University	Climate Economics: What Do We Know About Unknown Risks?

Friday, January 18, 2013 The Importance of Biodiversity to Human Health
Aaron Bernstein, MD, MPH Associate Director, Center for Global Health and the Environment, Harvard School of Public Health
Seminar Summary: Dr. Bernstein will discuss biodiversity and how it is both essential to human health and disappearing at a rapid rate. We rely on biodiversity for the provision of food, water, and medicine; as a check upon the spread of certain infectious diseases; and also as a resource to better understand how our own bodies work in states of health and disease. The primary cause of biodiversity loss today is the degradation or outright destruction of habitat on land, in fresh water, and the oceans. In coming decades, climate change is predicted to push one quarter or more of species to the brink of extinction. As species are lost, the web of life that sustains organisms, including humans, frays. Preventing further loss of biodiversity, which requires limiting the extent of climate change, is essential to assuring the healthiest possible future for all people.
Readings: Chivian and Bernstein 2010 How Our Health Depends on Biodiversity

Friday, January 25, 2012 Health and Economic Impacts of Air Quality in a Changed Climate
Noelle Selin, PhD MIT Engineering Systems Division and Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences
Seminar Summary: Dr. Selin will give a summary of the scientific issues surrounding air quality, and how it interacts with climate change both from the perspective of emissions and chemistry. She will talk about her research group’s recent findings on the health and economic impacts of air quality, specifically addressing the economic costs of morbidities and mortalities from ozone and particulate matter in the US, Europe, China, and globally. Dr. Selin will present some new results on co-benefits for air quality and health from climate policies in the US.
Readings: Selin 2009 Global health and economic impacts of future ozone pollution Matus 2012 Health damages from air pollution in China

Friday, February 1, 2012 Climate Justice: Looking Forward
J. Timmons Roberts, PhD Ittleson Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology, Brown University
Seminar Summary: Climate change raises issues of injustice because the countries and indviduals who are least responsible are suffering worst and first. In this talk Dr. Roberts will document three elements of climate injustice, describe the mission and work of his Climate and Development Lab at Brown University, and describe avenues forward for the international negotiations and the need for national and local action in the US.
Readings: Roberts 2011 Multipolarity and the new world disorder – US hegemonic decline and the fragmentation of the global climate regime Parks and Roberts 2010 Climate Change, Social Theory, and Justice

Friday, February 8, 2013Rescheduled to Friday, March 29, 2013 Adapting Agriculture to a Warmer World
Ethan Butler, PhD Candidate Department of Earth and Planetary Science, Harvard University
Seminar Summary: Mr. Butler will discuss the challenge that global warming adds to feeding a growing and more affluent population in the 21st century. Warmer temperatures are expected to decrease yields across most of the globe, but most analyses have been done without quantitatively assessing the capacity for adaptation to reduce yield losses from warming. To begin to address the challenge of feeding humanity in the coming century Mr. Butler will conclude with work on the potential for adaptation to reduce damage to US maize from modest warming.
Readings: Butler and Huybers 2012 Adaptation of US Maize to Temperature Variation Lobell 2008 Prioritizing Climate Change Adaptation Needs for Food Security

Friday, February 15, 2013 Neighborhood Determinants of Community Health, Judy Ou, MPHEnvironmental Obesogens: Are They Bad to the Bone?, James Watt, MSc
PhD Students, Environmental Health Department, BUSPH
Seminar Summary for Judy Ou, MPH: Studies of the built environment and community health commonly exclude important aspects of the social environment. By excluding social context, prior studies lack the ability to examine the cumulative effect of multiple environmental exposures on health outcomes. For example, studies of the association between proximity to green space and physical activity often do not account for fear of neighborhood violence, which may prevent residents from utilizing green spaces and being physically active. Miss Ou will present an overview of the Chelsea STAR project, a community-based participatory research project designed to examine the cumulative effect of multiple stressors on community health, and preliminary results.
Seminar Summary for James Watt, MSc: Environmental obesogens are an emerging class of endocrine disrupting chemicals, some of which promote adipogenesis via activation of the transcription factor PPARg. Mr. Watt’s research focuses on the toxic effects of enviornmental PPARg/RXR ligands in the bone marrow, where a balance exists between the accumulation of fat and the development of bone tissue. His results show that several environmental obesogens – members of both the organotin (agricultural fungicides) and phthalate (contaminants in plastics) classes – potently and efficaciously divert the differentiation pathway of bone precursor cells toward fat accumulation at the expense of bone development. These results have important implications for bone health, in that increases in bone marrow adiposity are associated with low bone density, osteoporosis, and increased risk of fracture, among other adverse effects.

Friday, February 22, 2013 European Union Leadership on Climate Change Policy: Can It Be Sustained?
Henrik Selin, PhD Associate Professor of International Relations, Boston University
Seminar Summary: The EU over the past two decades has developed some of the world’s most comprehensive climate change mitigation policies. EU greenhouse gas emissions have also gone down since 1990. The EU, however, currently is at a crossroads politically. This presentation reviews EU climate change policy to date and discusses opportunities and challenges of sustaining progress over the coming decades.
Readings: Selin and VanDeveer 2012 Global Climate Change: Beyond Kyoto Jordan 2012 Understanding the Paradoxes of Multilevel Governing: Climate Change Policy in the EU Schmidt 2008 Why Europe Leads on Climate Change

Friday, March 1, 2013 Are We Negotiating the Wrong Climate Treaty?
William Moomaw, PhD Director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University
Seminar Summary: Despite over 20 years of unsuccessful attempts to negotiate a pollution control treaty to address climate change, diplomats persist in this unproductive strategy. They speak of burden sharing, continue to argue over blame, and call for equitable use of the atmosphere as a waste dump for heat trapping gases. Dr. Moomaw, a chemist turned policy scientist, suggests that this approach will never succeed in getting a viable agreement since it is based upon a lack of trust and a sense that this is “not my problem to solve.” He argues, using negotiations theory, that diplomacy needs to shift from burden bearing to opportunity sharing. Specifically, focusing on low carbon, clean energy services for all levels of development provides one track for doing so.
Readings: Moomaw and Papa 2012 Creating a Mutual Gains Climate Regime Through Universal Clean Energy Services

Friday, March 8, 2013 Rescheduled to Friday, May 10, 2013Climate Economics: What Do We Know About Unknown Risks?
Frank Ackerman, PhD Global Development and Evironment Institute, Tufts University
Seminar Summary: The “known,” near-term costs of climate change are becoming more serious, with the growing frequency of extreme weather events, losses in agriculture, and destruction of coastal property. The longer-term, often unknown risks remain even more ominous, challenging conventional ways of thinking about discounting obligations to the future, responses to low (but nonzero) probabilities of catastrophic losses, and the cost-benefit paradigm for policymaking. What would a new economic analysis need to include, in order to respond to the true magnitude of the global climate crisis?
Readings: Ackerman and Stanton 2013 Climate Impacts on Agriculture: A Challenge to Complacency? Ackerman 2008 Climate Economics in Four Easy Pieces

Friday, March 22, 2013 Prenatal exposure to traffic-related pollution and childhood cognition in Project Viva, Maria Harris, SM New Bedford Harbor Superfund Site: Environmental Health Issues and Context, Kate Crawford, MS
PhD Students, BUSPH Environmental Health Department
Seminar Summary for Maria Harris, SM: The prenatal period appears to be a critical window for neurodevelopment. Recent epidemiological studies have suggested that exposure to traffic-related air pollution during gestation may negatively impact the developing brain, potentially impairing childhood cognition and behavior. Maria will discuss a new study in the Boston-based Project Viva prospective pre-birth cohort examining prenatal exposure to traffic and children’s performance on tests of neurodevelopment at school age.
Seminar Summary for Kate Crawford, MS: New Bedford Harbor is located in Buzzards Bay, in southeastern Massachusetts, and has long served an important economic role in the region. Robust whaling, textile, electronics manufacturing and fishing industries brought jobs and resources to the surrounding communities over the last three centuries, but the environmental legacies that remain place heavy economic burdens and health implications on these communities. Since New Bedford Harbor was designated a Superfund Site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1982 significant resources have been invested in the remediation of environmental contaminants, and ecological and health studies. However, the persistence of contamination in the harbor and other sites in the region has led to tension between members of the local community and government and academic organizations. Understanding the current environmental health landscape in the region will improve the efficacy with which Boston University’s Superfund Research Program is able to engage in the community and translate findings while undertaking research in the area.

Friday, April 5, 2013 Adding Fuel to the Fire: The science, public opinion, and proposed changes to California’s Technical Bulletins 133 & 117, Emma Virginia, MPH Traffic-related Air Pollution and Childhood Asthma in Lima, Peru, Lindsay Underhill, MPH
PhD Students, BUSPH Environmental Health Department
Seminar Summary for Emma Virginia, MPH: This seminar will address the legacy of California’s fire safety standards, specifically Technical Bulletins 133 and 117. Industry meets these performance-based standards by adding flame retardant chemicals to the materials, which then escape these products and enter the surrounding environment exposing consumers to harmful chemicals. In response to studies of harmful effects to human health of these chemicals and public outcry resulting from an Investigative Reporting series in the Chicago Tribune, the Governor of California issued a directive to revise TB 117 to better meet fire safety and to lower the use of harmful chemicals in these products. Ms. Virginia will discuss the proposed changes to TB 117 and their implications for the use of flame retardants.
Seminar Summary for Lindsay Underhill, MPH: According to WHO, asthma is now the most common chronic disease in children worldwide. While traffic-related air pollution is commonly cited as a risk factor for childhood asthma, the majority of this research has been conducted in wealthy, developed countries. The results and methodology from these studies are not easily translatable to developing countries due to the unique set of environmental health and socioeconomic challenges they face. Ms. Underhill will discuss these issues through the example of her research on the effect of distance from the road on household air quality in Lima, Peru. This pilot study was part of a multi-city investigation on the interactive effect of genetic and environmental factors on childhood asthma and was conducted on collaboration with John Hopkins University and La Asociacion Benefica PRISMA, a local NGO in Peru.

Friday, April 12, 2013 Climate Change, Security, and Conflict: Preliminary Findings from Africa and Latin America on a Long-Term Challenge
Jeffrey Stark Director of Research and Studies, Foundation for Environmental Security and Sustainability
Seminar Summary: Jeffrey Stark will be giving this year’s Gijs van Seventer Lectureship seminar on climate change and conflict. The lectureship is in tribute to Dr. Gijs van Seventer, an internationally recognized immunologist and a former member of the faculty of the Department of Environmental Health at Boston University School of Public Health.The seminar reviews the scholarly and policy debates on the relationship between climate change and security, and then looks at the specific findings from field research in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Peru. It aruges the need for a more nuanced perspective that closely traces the intersection of climate change effects with local political, economic, and social factors in order to relate them to the potential for instability and conflict. While these findings suggest modest linkages between climate change and conflict at present, they also indicate that ignoring such linkages may result in much higher costs in the decades ahead.
Readings: Stark 2011 Climate change and conflict in pastoralist regions of Ethiopia: Mounting challenges, emerging responses Stark 2009 Climate security, adaptation, and conflict

Friday, April 19, 2013 Household Water Treatment: Successes and Lessons Learned in Building Resiliency
Daniele Lantagne, PhD Assistant Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Tufts University
Seminar Summary: Household water treatment and safe storage (HWTS) is a water, sanitation, and hygiene intervention that has been shown to reduce diarrheal disease by improving the microbiological quality of stored household water. In this talk, Dr. Lantagne will review the evidence on HWTS options, particularly in the emergency context, with focus on how to build resiliency at the household level to prevent transmission of infectious diarrhea.
Readings: Lantagne 2012 Use of household water treatment and safe storage methods in acute emergency response: Case study results from Nepal, Indonesia, Kenya, and Haiti Harshfield 2012 Evaluating the sustained health impact of household chlorination of drinking water in rural Haiti Lantagne 2006 Household water treatment and safe storage options in developing countries

Friday, April 26, 2013 PBDEs and Thyroid Function in a Longitudinal Biomonitoring Study
Colleen Makey, MPH PhD Candidate, Environmental Health Department, BUSPH
Seminar Summary: Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are a class of flame retardant chemicals that were added to many consumer products such as furniture, textiles, and electronic equipment. As PBDEs are not covalently bound, human exposure can occue when PBDEs are released to the environment. North Americans are among the most highly exposed population, with median serum concentrations about an order of magnitude higher than European or Asian populations. The lower brominated PBDEs are structurally similar to the thyroid hormone thyroxine and triiodothyronine and multiple animal studies have shown PBDEs to be thyroid disruptors. Epidemiologic evidence of thyroid disruption has been mixed, with PBDE exposure associated with increases, decreases, or no effect on thyroid hormones. However, most of these epidemiologic studies have been cross-sectional. Our study is the first to use repeated measures of PBDEs to assess the reliability of PBDE serum measures and examine the association between PBDE exposure and thyroid function in a well-characterized North American adult cohort.

Organized by: Rebecca Laws, Alexis Maule, Stefani Penn, and Jean van Seventer
Contact: Jean van Seventer (jvsevent@bu.edu)