Yuan Wu Activities

California - China Environmental Health Training Program

Dong Yuan & Liming Wu Activities

Taking Classes, Seminars

(1). Both trainees Dong Yuan and Liming Wu are currently taking two classes from the School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley:

PH 254 --- Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Tue Thu 12:30-2:00pm

Instructor: Epidemiology Professor Allan Smith

PH 253A --- Topics in Disease Surveillance Thu 2:00-4:00pm

Instructors: George W. Rutherford, Rick Kreutzer

Dong and Professor Allan Smith in Class, Spring 2006

(2) Case Study with Daniel Smith: Dr. Smith has been working with our trainees on a few CDC case studies such as 'Injury Surveillance'; 'Cigarette Smoking and Lung Cancer'; 'A Mixed Bag in Michigan'; 'Vinyl Chloride and Cancer', etc. He also teaches Dong and Liming statistical analysis and related software applications. Many thanks to Dan.

(3). Dr. Rick Kreutzer meets with Dong Yuan, Liming Wu and Lixia Zhang every Monday afternoon to discuss the trainees activities, progress etc. Dr. Kreutzer is also helping our trainees with their technical paper writing. Many thanks to Rick, too.

(4). Each week on Monday at lunch time, our co-worker May Lynn Tan meets with Liming and Dong for an hour teaching them English. They have a specific topic each time, such as 'in the restaurant', 'in a bank', 'going shopping', 'in the airport', etc to practice daily English conversation. Thank you, May Lynn for volunteering to tutor.

(5). In order to meet the trainees' strong willingness to improve their English pronunciation level, we have found two more English tutors to specifically work with them one to one. Lixia Zhang collects interesting reading materials from different sources, and each time when they meet the trainee reads the article to his tutor and the tutor corrects incorrect pronunciation. Both trainees like this style of learning very much.

(6). Our trainees Dong Yuan and Liming Wu also go to the Berkeley First Presbyterian Church on Sundays to attend the church English classes. By doing so, they are learning both English and the American culture. In addition, they also joined the church members in serving the homeless people meals, as well as other activities.

Working on Projects

Dong Yuan

1. Health Impact Monitoring System of Air Quality and Temperature in Shanghai, China

The objective of this project is to establish a health impact monitoring and early health warning system in Shanghai in order to minimize the potential increase of some major diseases or illnesses during particular environmental conditions such as heat wave, severe air pollution, extremely higher/lower humidity, and abnormal air pressure.

The study uses 5 years (1998-2002) of health data --- emergency room admissions, hospital admissions, and mortality data for respiratory diseases, cardiovascular diseases, etc; as well as meteorological data --- temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind direction and wind speed; and air pollution data --- carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO), PM2.5 and PM10, ozone and sulfur dioxide (SO2), to analyze the relationship between the selected health endpoints and environmental factors. The goal now is to define the major risk factors and their risk levels based on the data analysis and eventually establish a health warning system in Shanghai.

2. Children Asthma Control and Application of Patient Self-Management System

Childhood asthma is one of the major health problems in Shanghai. In order to efficiently prevent and control asthma, Shanghai CDC along with some community health centers and hospitals, is working to develop a self-management system as part of the asthma surveillance project.

The project includes: a. data collection --- collect hospital admission data for asthma, conduct asthma surveillance in selected schools and kindergartens; b. combine the population health data with environmental monitoring data such as indoor/outdoor air quality and allergen data such as cockroaches, dust mite, cats, dogs, rodents and fungus; c. perform statistical analysis to determine the asthma prevalence and trends in Shanghai; d. working with clinical doctors to develop a patient family self-monitoring system for asthma early detection; e. city community health centers conduct various health education programs.

Liming Wu

1. Heating & Ventilating Air Conditioning Systems (HVACs) Contamination Status

and Health Risk Assessment

Shanghai is one of the biggest cities in China and also is the national economic and cultural center. With economic development, the number of HVACs has climbed rapidly. More and more places, such as office buildings, recreational centers and hospitals have installed HVAC to improve indoor air quality (IAQ) and body comfort. However, due to the inappropriate design, installation, management, and inspection, various contaminants can pollute indoor air and endanger public health through HVACs including viruses, mites, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), etc. In 2003, during the SARS epidemic, people suspected the possibility of the virus transmitting by air ducts and the HVACs were shut down. This project is designed to identify the major harmful factors, the current contamination status and pollution resources of HVACs in Shanghai. The analysis results will be used to set up guidelines for management and inspection of HVACs.

2. Integrated Environmental Health Surveillance Systems in Communities

This project started in 2005 and is sponsored by the National Chinese Center for Disease Control & Prevention. Its objective is to establish integrated environmental health surveillance systems in communities. In the pilot study, there were two communities involved, one is a traditional residence and the other is located near several large steel plants and power plants.

The exposure data collected include:

(1) Ambient air pollution data provided by Shanghai Environmental Protection Administration, such as PM₁₀, NO₂, SO₂, O₃, CO (2). Weather data from Shanghai Meteorology Bureau, including temperature, humidity, etc.

The health outcomes data cover:

(1) Mortality data from the Division of Statistics, Shanghai CDC; (2) Cancer incidence data contributed by Division of cancer registry, Shanghai CDC; (3) Advanced symptoms of diseases collected by telephone investiigation; (4) Biomarkers of specific diseases.

Geographic Information System (GIS), and time-series analysis will be used to analyze the

relationships between environmental factors and human health effect.

3. Assessment of Personal Exposure to Particulate Matters and the Estimating Model

With the rapid increase of use of motor vehicles, the air pollution situation in Shanghai has changed from the coal combustion type to a typical combination of traffic smog and coal combustion. The governor and the general public are paying more attention to this challenge. According to the measurement results of Shanghai EPA, Particulate Matter (PM), especially PM₁₀, is the primary air pollutant in Shanghai. There are a lot of epidemiology studies carried out for determining the health effects of PM. Nevertheless, these epidemiology studies have used data from the ambient air pollution monitoring system as a surrogate of the actual exposure dose for the population who spends much time (≥20 hours) indoors. The purpose of this project is to get a better understanding of the relationship between personal exposures and stationary measurements for PM. By measuring the ambient PM₁₀ concentrations and residential air exchange rates and collecting human activity pattern data from 20 volunteers aged 65 or above, we will try to reveal the relationship among ambient PM₁₀ concentrations, indoor PM₁₀ concentrations and personal PM₁₀ concentrations and establish a personal exposure estimate model. The actual exposure dose can be used to discover the relation between PM₁₀ and health outcomes such as lung cancer, asthma, COPD, and cardiovascular diseases.

Other Activities

In addition to working on research projects and taking classes from the School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, the trainees also actively participate in other academic training activities such as seminars, project meetings and conferences.

Below are the activity reports they have submitted.

Dong Yuan

1. Roundtable Meeting of Prioritizing the Community Needs at Hazardous Wastes Sites

2. DEODC Emergency Response Exercise

3. Natural Bridges State Beach Tour

4. Attending South Coast Air Quality Management District Asthma Conference

5. Case Study on Injury Surveillance

6. Visit Tobacco Control Section in CDPH, Sacramento

7. Meeting With Lida Tan in the US EPA Region 9 Office

8. Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Class in UC Berkeley