• MIEH/BARC/Environment Canada Summer Studentship

  The McMaster Institute of Environment & Health (MIEH) and its partners the Bay Area Restoration Council (BARC) and Environment Canada (EC) seeks to recruit a student for the summer of 2013 to assist the partners with various projects. The candidate will have three primary duties: (1) Assist Environment Canada staff with addressing E.coli in storm water runoff at Bayfront Beach; (2) Assist BARC with various tasks related to outreach, and (3) assist MIEH with research projects as required.

  The student may be required to lift heavy objects and work during inclement weather.  Bayfront Park and the work environment is accessible by public transit, but access to a car may be beneficial.  
   
  The project term is April 29 – August 23, 2013. Exact start and end dates are negotiable. Applications (resume (including 3 reference contacts) and cover letter are due by April 15, 2013.  Pay is up to $15/hour (dependent on level of schooling and experience), with a 35 hour work week. Interested individuals should forward their resume and cover letter (electronically) to:

  Dr. Bruce Newbold
  Director, MIEH
  newbold@mcmaster.ca
  905-525-9140 x27948

  Addressing E.coli in storm water runoff at Bayfront Beach

  Introduction

  Bayfront Beach, located on the southwest shore of Hamilton Harbour in an enclosed bay, has experienced health advisory postings on a regular basis during summer months.  The land adjacent to Bayfront Beach slopes toward the beach sand and is primarily turf grass often inhabited by Canada geese. Potentially high levels of E. coli in runoff intercept the beach sand and discharge in the nearshore surface water. Under optimum conditions beach sand may act as a storage reservoir for E. coli (Sampson et al. 2006; Whitman and Nevers 2003). During precipitation and wind events E coli in beach sand may be transported to the surface water by infiltration and wave agitation causing exceedances of the PWQO in nearshore water.  This is potentially exacerbated by limited flows in the bay that inhibit exchange of water with Hamilton Harbour during the summer season.

  The following proposal incorporates 1) a study to characterize E. coli loads in runoff intercepting Bayfront Beach; 2) characterize E. coli, Total Phosphorus (TP) and Soluble Reactive Phosphorus (SRP) in ankle depth water at Bayfront Beach; 3) a BARC public outreach component.

  The objective of the runoff study is to implement a modeling approach to estimate the load of E. coli intercepting the beach during precipitation events and compare E. coli, TP and SRP in ankle depth water during wet and dry events.

  The Bay Area Restoration Council (BARC) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the restoration of Hamilton Harbour and its watershed.  Formed in 1991, BARC was created as the public arm for the Hamilton Harbour Remedial Action Plan.  BARC’s mandate is to promote, monitor and assess RAP implementation.  It involves the community in the restoration of the Harbour through school programs, volunteer events, public meetings, resource materials, and newsletters. BARC has been urging people to stop feeding the birds though its “Don’t Feed the Waterfowl” campaign and “Why Can’t We Swim” program. BARC staff and volunteers have spent a few hours each week during the swimming season at Bayfront Park, Pier 4 Park and LaSalle Marina handing out flyers and educating the public. 

  Results of these studies will 1) provide insight into the fate of E. coli in runoff intercepting beach sand 2) provide insight into nutrients and E. coli in ankle depth water at Bayfront Beach; 3) allow for sound decisions on E. coli mitigation at Bayfront Beach thereby providing the public with safe and aesthetically pleasing beaches; 3) educate the public on the importance of not feeding water fowl and why we can’t swim; 3) provide valuable information for HH RAP de-listing in 2020.

  Personnel:

  We are looking for a dedicated and ambitious student to assist Environment Canada, BARC, and the City of Hamilton by conducting:

  • Runoff sample collection during precipitation events at Bayfront Beach in Hamilton Ont.:
  • The student will be responsible for collecting 4 to 10 runoff samples in 250 ml sterilized plastic bottles at the armor stone adjacent to Bayfront Beach during each precipitation event. Samples will be stored in a cooler and arrangements will be made for transfer to Environment Canada at CCIW in Burlington the same day or the next morning. Bottles and coolers will be supplied by Environment Canada.
  • Assist BARC with various tasks related to public outreach. Responsibilities will include:
  • Deliver several of BARC’s school programs including Stream of Dreams™ and Yellow Fish Road™. Attend events such as the Children’s Water Festival and Earth Day Ecofestival.
  • Work shifts at offsite locations including the information kiosk at Bayfront Park and BARC’s new walk-in space at the HWT Centre.  This will include setup and teardown during each shift, providing information and answering questions from the public.
  • Assist in BARC’s “Don’t Feed Waterfowl” program by intercepting visitors (both those feeding birds and those not) at the beaches.  Interception involves informing visitors in a friendly manner about the negative impacts of feeding birds, and providing brochures.
  • Assist with public events such as marsh volunteer plantings, stream cleanups and fishing derby.  Set up and attend BARC display booth as required.
  • Assist in event planning and communications including community workshops and newsletters.
  • Assist the City of Hamilton, Parks District North division where needed.

  Training will be provided by Environment Canada, BARC and the City of Hamilton. Appropriate health and safety documents will be reviewed with the student and signed off before commencement of field work.

  The student will be required to lift heavy objects and work during inclement weather. 

• MIEH Research on Immigrants' Quality of Life in Hamilton Spectator

MIEH Researchers Allison Williams, Bruce Newbold and Peter Kitchen presented their research findings at a workshop on February 11, 2013. For details, please see the Spectator story.

• MIEH supports "Upwind Downwind Conference 2012: Unlikely Partners"

  For more information, please visit the conference website at: http://cleanair.hamilton.ca/default.asp?id=42
  
  
  

• MIEH welcomes visiting Fulbright Chair Dr. Michele Morrone
  
  Dr. Morrone is an Associate Professor of Environmental Health and the Director of Environmental Studies at Ohio University. She is a 2012 Fulbright Scholar at McMaster Institute of Environment & Health and the Department of Health, Aging, and Society at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. She will be on campus through the end of April, and will be presenting at the January MIEH seminar, and will be organizing a campus workshop on sustainability (information TBA).
  

Dr. Morrone earned a Ph.D. in environmental planning from The Ohio State University, an M.S. in forest resources from the University of New Hampshire and a B.S. in natural resources from The Ohio State University. Dr. Morrone previously served as the Chief of the Office of Environmental Education at Ohio Environmental Protection Agency. She has authored or co-authored more than 40 papers on a variety of environmental issues and has appeared on CNN and quoted as an environmental health expert in US News and World Report, the Detroit Free Press, USA Today, The Christian Science Monitor, The Columbus Dispatch, and the Cleveland Plain Dealer. She has published three books Sound Science, Junk Policy: Environmental Health Science and the Decision Making Process (2002), Poisons on Our Plates: The Real Food Safety Problem in the United States (2008) and Mountains of Injustice: Case Studies in Environmental Equity (2011).




• MIEH Research Associate, Allison Williams's New Book
  
  Health in Rural Canada
  edited Judith C. Kulig and Allison M. Williams
  www.ubcpress.ca
  
  Health research in Canada has mostly focused on urban areas, often overlooking the unique issues faced by Canadians living in rural and remote areas. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of the state of rural health and health care in Canada, from coast to coast and in northern communities.
  
  The contributors bring insights and methodologies from nursing, social work, geography, epidemiology, and sociology and from community-based research to a full spectrum of topics: health literacy, rural health care delivery and training, Aboriginal health, web-based services and their application, rural palliative care, and rural health research and policy. Combined with a general overview of how rural services are structured and funded within the Canadian health care system, these diverse explorations of health and place highlight three key themes: rural places matter to health, rural places are unique, and rural places are dynamic.
  
  Wide-ranging and multifaceted, Health in Rural Canada offers researchers and policy-makers, students and practitioners a valuable resource for understanding the special, ever-changing needs of rural communities.

   

• Unique study maps neighbourhood air pollution
  
  A new neighbourhood study suggests air pollution spewed from traffic is threatening the health of north Hamilton residents, even as the city as a whole breathes easier. To read the rest of this article, click here.
  
  

• MIEH's New Associate Director, Dr. Jim Dunn
  
  Dr. Dunn holds a Chair in Applied Public Health from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Public Health Agency of Canada called the Chair in Research on Urban Neighbourhoods, Community Health & Housing (CRUNCH – www.crunch.mcmaster.ca). He is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Aging and Society at McMaster University and a Scientist at the Centre for Research on Inner City Health (CRICH) at St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto. He is also a Fellow of the Successful Societies program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and the Deputy Editor of the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health. He has been a scientific advisor to a number of policy-related bodies, including the Privy Council Office of Canada, Health Canada, the National Housing Research Committee of Canada, Peel Public Health, the City of Hamilton and the World Health Organization. His major focus is on investigating the impacts of neighbourhood and housing interventions on health and health inequalities. He has several projects related to the role of housing and neighbourhood in the production of social inequalities in health. Among these is a project investigating the impact of the redevelopment of the Regent Park neighbourhood in Toronto, one of Canada’s oldest and largest public housing developments, on adult mental health and children’s developmental health and competencies.
  
  
  
• MIEH's New Advisory Board
  
  Theresa McClenaghan, Canadian Environmental Law Association
  Frank Harrison, US Steel and Hamilton Industrial Environmental Association
  Rob Hall, Hamilton Public Health Services
  Jim Hudson, Bay Area Restoration Council
  Sara Edge, PhD Candidate, School of Geography & Earth Sciences, McMaster University
  Dr. Brian McCarry, Professor, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, McMaster University
  Evert Nieboer, Professor Emeritus, McMaster University
  Ray Copes, Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion

• MIEH Welcomes Suzanne Morrissey, Fulbright Research Chair in Environmental Health
  
  

  
  

  Suzanne Morrissey is an assistant professor of anthropology and gender studies at Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA.  She received her Ph.D. from Syracuse University in 2006. Her early research took place in the Republic of Ireland, where she explored state maternal and child health policies and programs and their relationship to women’s infant feedings choices.  Her dissertation research – part of a larger, federally-funded infant mortality prevention project – was an organizational ethnography of WIC, the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children in Syracuse, New York through which she explored the strategic use of public health services among low income, urban women.  Most recently, Suzanne’s research in maternal health has moved in the direction of studying birth experiences in Ecuador.  She is currently working on the production of an ethnographic film surrounding changing birth practices of indigenous women in Highland Ecuador.

  
  

  Broadly, Dr. Morrissey’s interests include U.S.-Canada comparative research on the uses of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), health-seeking decisions among indigenous peoples of North and South America, and the anthropology of urban North America. As the Fulbright-McMaster Visiting Research Chair, Morrissey will pursue comparative and collaborative research with Canadian scholars around the uses of chiropractic, acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine for “hard-to-diagnose” illnesses and syndromes.  Morrissey’s work will contribute to research literacy on CAM therapies for medically unexplained syndromes or emerging illnesses that disproportionately affect women such as chronic fatigue, multiple chemical sensitivity, fibromyalgia and lupus.
  
  While at McMaster, Dr. Morrissey will focus her research on complimentary and alternative medicine. Here is an explanation of her course of research at McMaster:
  
  Knowledge and use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) in North America has increased steadily over the past two decades – an increase that appears to coincide with resistance to the dominance of medical and scientific discourses.  Of particular interest to researchers of CAM is who chooses CAM therapies such as acupuncture and natural health products and why.  Demographers have shown that women are more likely than men to use CAM, and often for illnesses with symptoms that are deemed insignificant or unrecordable by biomedical standards and bureaucratic codes, or that are complex and overlapping in ways that defy conventional diagnosis and treatment.  This project aims to contribute to a burgeoning qualitative literature that encourages and informs research literacy around CAM therapies for “medically unexplained” syndromes or emerging illnesses that disproportionately affect women such as chronic fatigue, multiple chemical sensitivities, fibromyalgia, lupus, and celiac disease.  Through ethnographic research with providers and clients of CAM at naturopathic clinics and sites of integrative medicine, I will examine the experiences of exclusion from conventional medical benefits (social and financial) and inclusion in integrative systems of care.  My goal is to provide case study data on CAM and integrative treatment outcomes, and how the language of suffering is reconceived and rewritten to accommodate emerging uncertain illnesses.
  
  
  

• Dr. Malone gave the first joint MIEH-UN-INWEH public lecture, October 13, 2009

Bruce Newbold (left, Director, MIEH) and Dr. Zafar Adeel (right, Director, United Nations University - International Network on Water, Environment & Health (UNU-INWEH)) with Dr. David Malone, President of the IDRC.



• Volunteer Opportunity with City of Hamilton Public Health (closed).
• Feature Article in Equal Access E-newsletter - West Nile Virus Educational Outreach and Evaluation to Diverse Populations (details)
• Angela Di Nello
  MIEH welcomes Angela Di Nello as MIEH Coodinator. Angela will be starting her new post on March 23, replacing Anita Toth who will be on materinity leave. Please help us welcome Angela.
• Scottish Steelworkers
  Participants needed for a study on Scottish Steelworkers living in Canada (closed).
  
• Diploma Program in Environmental Health
  Click here for more information.
• Conference
  Call for Papers 2009 International Symposium in Medical Geography
  Registration and abstract submission will open Tuesday December 2, 2008 and will close on February 15, 2009. A second call for papers will go out in mid-January, 2009. Please visit the IMGS website to register today.

Registration and abstract submission will open Tuesday December 2, 2008 and will close on February 15, 2009. A second call for papers will go out in mid-January, 2009. Please visit the IMGS website to register today.

This was the 4th year that MIEH participated in McMaster's Commuter Challenge. As with previous years, MIEH had a strong presence in the challenge even though we are a small group. We had 100% participation and were co-winners in our class grouping of 1-10 participants.

Congratulations to the 2007 MIEH USRA (Undergraduate Student Research Award) Winners

(May 2007)

Huyen Dam
Ivy Dam
Sara Hamilton
Dana Lee
Ari Doumouras

They will be working with the Public Health Department, City of Hamilton.