Several CGRER members are involved in studies that relate evolving human health concerns to some form of global change: changing climate, increased pollution, soaring population, or another form of human-induced environmental alteration. These changes induce exposure to chemical substances or other hazardous agents that were absent, or present in much lower concentrations, in the past.


The boundaries of smoke plumes produced by oil well fires such as these were tracked by satellite photographs.

For example, the decline in stratospheric ozone has motivated much of Garry Buettner's research. Garry, a research scientist in General Medicine, has spent several years searching for mechanisms to prevent the detrimental effects of ultra-violet radiation that, with the ongoing decline in protective ozone, is increasingly penetrating the atmosphere. This increase is directly attributable to CFCs, the chlorofluorocarbons that have been used as gas propellants and refrigerants. UV light can induce cataracts and skin cancer and suppress the immune system. Buettner is concerned primarily about UV light's ability to increase free radicals in the skin. Garry and Beth Ann Jurkiewicz, Ph.D., a recent U of I graduate, have investigated whether these free radicals are indeed the direct cause of accelerated photo-aging and increased cancer. Or, he asks, is cancer induced by the greater production of "bad iron" in the skin, which serves as a catalyst for chemical reactions leading to skin cancer? Deciphering the link between UV exposure, free radicals, iron, and skin cancer would allow development of more effective preventive techniques, another topic being investigated in Buettner's laboratory.

Burt Kross, associate professor in Preventive Medicine, is concerned about pollutant exposures on the European continent. As director of the Center for International Rural and Environmental Health, he also heads a training program for professionals in central and eastern European countries, where severe environmental degradation is impacting the health of residents and contributing to significant declines in life expectancy. There, the past forty years of Soviet industrialization have left an indelible mark, manifest today as localized areas of severe air and water pollution and multiple toxic waste sites. A variety of professionals must regularly deal with these problems, but do not necessarily have the educational tools to do so. Between the years 1996 and 2000, about 20 such professionals will come to the U of I for six-month training programs that will help them address their day-to-day tasks. While here they will take advanced coursework, and they will develop relevant short courses to teach after returning home, through a newly founded International Institute for and Environmental Health in Slovakia. These short courses ultimately will build the skills and supplement the knowledge base of hundreds of engineers, researchers, health care administrators, policy makers, and educators throughout eastern Europe. In addition to administering this program, Kross is carrying on research on the high prevalence of methemoglobenemia ("blue baby disorder") in Romania, and he is co-directing a project that focuses on health hazards of indoor radon in Slovenia.

Annmarie Eldering, an assistant professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering, is interested primarily in fine particles and how emissions from natural sources, industry, and automobiles are transformed into fine particles in the atmosphere. Atmospheric particles that are less than 2.5 microns in diameter are virtually all the result of industrial activity, and even very small quantities can impact human health. In one of her ongoing projects, she is searching for the cause of episodic increases of such particles in Idaho and she is studying the chemistry of the particles in those outbreaks. In another, she is examining the radiative qualities of small particles that are present in the upper troposphere and stratosphere, high in the atmosphere. There, fine particles reflect incoming radiation from the sun, and thus oppose the effects of greenhouse gases that hold in the sun's heat. Eldering is investigating how calculations of the radiative effects of small particles are influenced by uncertainties in the description of the particles. In yet a third ongoing project, being conducted jointly with Peter Thorne and Steve Reynolds (both in the Department of Preventive Medicine), Annmarie is attempting to verify and validate the current measuring techniques chniques used for detecting ammonia in the gas phase and ammonia that is adhering to small particles. This ammonia, inhaled by agricultural workers in swine confinement buildings, can irritate and inflame the airways or lung tissues.

Peter Thorne's specialty is pulmonary toxicology, specifically occupational lung disease arising from agricultural and industrial exposures. More specifically, Peter -- an associate professor in the Preventive Medicine department -- spends his time characterizing bioaerosols (airborne particles that arise from biological sources, such as bacteria and mold spores) and various gases and vapors. Many of these exposures are intensified in the modern, chemical-laden workplace and well-sealed home. But Peter was also a member of the research team that studied large numbers of Iowa Persian Gulf War veterans, which in January received national press for its documentation of the significant increases in self-reported symptoms of these veterans. These symptoms included medical and psychological complaints such as depression, cognitive dysfunction, and fibromyalgia.

Now Peter is commencing a follow-up study that demonstrates the powers of GIS -- computerized Geographical Information Systems that allow expression, overlap, and manipulation of multiple data sets in a visual, maplike format. The study will feed off the unbelievably detailed information available for troop movement in the Persian Gulf War and for the many types of exposures that soldiers may have faced there: combat, airborne plumes of nerve agents and mustard gas, SCUD missile detonations, oil well fire plumes, and the like. GIS will be used to track the daily movements of each of nearly 8,000 Iowa soldiers in the Persian Gulf. Data on the location and timing of each of many forms of exposure will be likewise entered into a GIS. When the two sets of data are combined, the type, intensity, and time of each form of exposure can be documented for every veteran in the study. The soldiers self-reported symptoms can then be correlated with -- and perhaps traced to -- specific exposures. Thorne will be performing his GIS computer analysis through the Army's Center for Health Promotion and Preventive Medicine in Maryland, but he may also rely on CGRER's computer lab during this study.

This GIS map overlays the smoke plume of multiple oil well fires (see above photo) with unit locations of Iowa veterans on the second day of the Persion Gulf War ground combat (2/25/91). Peter Thorne will use maps such as this to help correlate soldiers' locations with their known exposures and self-reported symptoms of illness. (Courtesy of Jeffrey Lange)

Gerard Rushton, a geography professor, has been working with some form or another of GIS since the early 1960s. Since that time, he has used these systems in various ways to link environmental changes with health-related matters. For example, he has had a long-term interest in health care delivery systems in India, where ever-changing health problems continue to grow with the country's burgeoning population. For the past quarter century, he has used GIS to match India's limited health care resources to the countrys geographic pattern of demand. His systems have helped the Indian government locate its clinics and other medical resources so that they are put to the best possible use. Similarly, he developed a GIS that assists the Iowa Department of Public Health in linking government-funded preventive programs in Des Moines with certain health problems -- more specifically, his GIS helps to locate nutritional, health educational, and similar programs in specific areas where infant mortality and birth defects are above average. Rushton also is on a GIS Advisory Committee to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Elevated rates of breast cancer on Long Island have prompted the NCI to fund research that will correlate the disease with possible causative factors such as air pollution, toxic waste dumps, and electromagnetic radiation. The first step is formation of a single GIS that will integrate the data for this multifaceted project. The Advisory Committee is establishing the parameters for this GIS system.