Water Conversations: Does living near water and greenness impact the mortality of Canadian urbanites? Findings from the Canadian Census Cohort

April 19, 2018聽at 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM

The Global Water Institute聽presents the Water Conversations Series to introduce and share research involving water and health to facilitate conversations and collaboration between researchers, faculty and students.

April鈥檚 speaker will be Dr. Paul Villeneuve from the Health Sciences Department at 杏吧原创 Unversity, Affiliated Researcher at the CHAIM Centre.

础产蝉迟谤补肠迟:听A number of epidemiological studies have shown that exposure to natural environments, such as green space, is associated with many health benefits. To date, few studies have looked at the potential link between living near water and mortality. We evaluated whether living near large, natural water features (e.g., lakes, rivers, coasts, 鈥渂lue space鈥�) as well as green space was associated with cause-specific mortality in a population-based cohort of non-immigrant, adults living in the 30 largest Canadian cities. Our cohort consisted of individuals who completed the mandatory 2001 Statistics Canada long-form census (1 in 5 households). These individuals were linked to the Canadian mortality database, and to annual income tax filings, through 2011. We estimated associations between living within 250 m of blue space and green space and several common causes of death. We adjusted models for many personal and contextual covariates, as well as for exposures to ambient air pollution. Our cohort included approximately 1路3 million subjects at baseline, 106,180 of whom died from non-accidental causes during follow-up. There were slight differences in sociodemographic characteristics between individuals living by water and not, but model point estimates changed only slightly with the inclusion of a comprehensive set of confounding factors. We reduced risks of mortality in the range of 12-17% associated with living within 250 m of water compared to living further away, among all causes of death examined, except with external/accidental causes. Similar inverse associations were noted for measures of greenness. Our findings suggest that living near nature has important benefits to health, but further work is needed to better understand the drivers of this association

Please RSVP with the main contact,聽Christiane Mineau聽by email or by phone.

Learn more about Dr. Paul Villeneuve and the research he does at 杏吧原创 University聽here.

By Ariel Root

As a frightening mixture of pathogens, organic materials, heavy metals, gases, pesticides, pharmaceuticals and other chemicals, wastewater requires specialized facilities and techniques to properly and sufficiently remove these contaminants, and then manage the removed wastes. While the goal in developing new engineering techniques for wastewater treatment is to remove these contaminants, the system must be applicable to big treatment plants, as well as small treatment systems in remote and rural communities鈥攁nd that can be a challenge.

Banu 脰谤尘别肠颈 is a Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and a Canada Research Chair in Wastewater Treatment Engineering. Her research aims to improve and develop the design and performance of treatment processes in order聽to clear pathogens and contaminants from wastewater and sludge, so they do not pose a threat to public health or the environment.

脰谤尘别肠颈鈥檚 interests have a wide application, including treatment development and treatment optimization. Having studied the fundamental processes involved in wastewater treatment, 脰谤尘别肠颈 thoroughly understands the fate of pathogenic and chemical contaminants before, during, and after the treatment processes. 鈥�Wastewater treatment is not only about removing pathogens and chemicals from wastewater; it’s also about understanding their impacts on the environment if they are discharged to the environment in small quantities in wastewater effluents鈥�. Chlorine is the cheapest and most widely used method of disinfection in North America but it does produce disinfection by-products that are harmful. Alongside application of ultraviolet light based disinfection to eliminate the chlorine byproducts, Ormeci works on alternative disinfection methods that can safely destroy harmful microorganisms. Some of 脰谤尘别肠颈鈥檚 research strives to improve the performance of such current processes, as well as develop new technologies that will achieve similar treatment results, but reduce operational costs.

One such development was her investigation of an environmentally-friendly and cost-effective wastewater treatment process using microalgae that could grow naturally while cleaning out nutrients and contaminants. 脰谤尘别肠颈 acknowledges, that the 鈥�unique circumstances of Canada requires that simple and effective treatment processes are developed for communities in the North. What works well in Ottawa or Toronto doesn鈥檛 [always] work well in small and rural communities especially in cold and remote regions.鈥� Partnering with industry has helped her advance new products, and explore new applications in Canada and abroad.

Working with industry and municipalities, 脰谤尘别肠颈 says that often partners 鈥�approach [her] with a problem that they need help solving鈥his real-world research is exciting, and important,鈥� she says. 鈥�It鈥檚 engineering but it鈥檚 also directly related to public health and environment, so there are many relevant applications, and there is a high demand.鈥� 脰谤尘别肠颈 has two U.S. patents and six pending international patents, and another commercialization on its way by one of the largest multi-national companies in the wastewater industry. 鈥�My research has been patented, licensed and commercialized; it鈥檚 very rewarding to see something that was developed in our lab be used at full scale in a treatment plant.鈥�

But for 脰谤尘别肠颈, the goal is not always a patent. In May 2016, 脰谤尘别肠颈 was named the recipient of the 2016聽. In addition to her fundamental and industrial research, she is a dedicated educator and mentor, organizing outreach events to promote and encourage the participation of women in science and engineering fields. 脰谤尘别肠颈 is the Faculty Advisor of the 杏吧原创 University Women in Science and Engineering (CU-WISE) group that is responsible for organizing events, camps, or panels, in high schools and at 杏吧原创 to help young women through support, advice, and camaraderie.

Aligned with the聽鈥檚 mandate, 脰谤尘别肠颈 recognizes the importance of educating the public about the important and significant research within the science and engineering domains. 鈥�Knowledge mobilization is not just about doing the research, but also about translating the research results to public and practitioners and generating the products that can benefit the Canadian economy. The society should ideally benefit from the research.鈥�

鈥�I like doing different things. I like the variety, and the challenge; different techniques, different areas, different projects鈥� [but] time is always a bottleneck.鈥� 脰谤尘别肠颈 has no intentions of slowing down, as she continues to lead engineering research through developments and design, as well as ongoing outreach and education that will benefit Canadians.

For Dr. 脰谤尘别肠颈’s聽contact information, go聽here.

By Natalie Linklater, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, 杏吧原创 University

Wastewater; it鈥檚 the term we use to denote anything and everything that gets flushed in toilets, rinsed down drains and washed off our streets. It can include residue from soaps and creams, residual pharmaceuticals, pollution from streets, and yes鈥� poop. Tucked away near the banks of rivers and lakes, treatment facilities have a number of steps that aim to clean wastewater before returning it back to the environment.

Wait?! What?!

You read that right. The ultimate goal is to return treated wastewater back into the environment. I know this may come as a bit of a shock but remember that the teaches us that 鈥渁ll the water on earth today, every drop, is all the water there has ever been on the planet鈥� (National Science Foundation, 2013). To keep our natural waters flowing and drinking water sources clean, treated wastewater needs to be returned back to the environment. There is no secret holding space or second magic flush. It all has to go somewhere, but before it does, we want to make sure it is as clean as possible. That鈥檚 why engineers and researchers are continuously re-examining and re-imagining every step of the treatment process to try and find new perspectives to the age old problem: what to do with all this poop!

Water treatment plant

Disinfection is the final stage of the wastewater treatment and is important because it reduces disease causing microorganisms to safe levels before wastewater is released into the wild. The ideal disinfectant is one that would accomplish the required amount of microorganism reduction while being easy to apply, inexpensive, leave little to no chemical residual and have little to no interaction with organic matter, which is abundant in natural and waste waters. This is one tall order! Of the disinfectants that are used today, chlorine is by far the most popular in North America.

Remember I said that engineers and researchers are continuously trying to re-imagine treatment processes? Now, imagine a disinfection process that uses no chemicals but is still able to reduce microbes to below target levels. is just such a process. The same type of light that radiates from the sun to cause sunburns can also be used to cause damage to microbial DNA rendering them inactive. In practice, we place UV light bulbs into large tanks and turn on the light for a set amount of time.

The difficulty arises during heavy rain storms. In these instances, extra water from the rain gets funnelled to treatment plants and risks flooding tanks and taking the entire treatment process offline. To prevent this, treatment plants make adjustments to accommodate larger volumes but do so by sacrificing a certain amount of quality. To assure that treatment plants still meet required targets, my research looks at supplementing UV with a secondary disinfectant such as ferrate, peracetic acid or hydrogen peroxide. You may have noticed that these are not your typical disinfectants. These chemicals are all chlorine-free and leave little to no residuals. As an added bonus, using two disinfectants has been shown to have synergistic effects.

E.coli sample

For the purpose of this blog post let鈥檚 discuss results obtained with ferrate, which are very promising! I鈥檝e examined the use of UV and ferrate both individually and in sequence using a number of different parameters. First, UV light in combination with ferrate reduced E.coli bacteria by an additional 80% compared to the use of UV light alone. Using a molecular stain to examine live and dead bacteria after treatment, ferrate also considerably decreased the number of living bacteria. This means that ferrate not only acts on E.coli, but is also effective at reducing a broader spectrum of bacteria. While I was looking at samples under the microscope I observed clumps of live and dead bacteria, which was unexpected.

Clumps of live and dead bacteria

This lead to questions such as: what are these clumps, why are they forming and are they a bad thing? The addition of ferrate to wastewater also increased the cloudiness or murkiness of the wastewater. This is because ferrate acts as a coagulant, or a substance that encourages smaller particles in wastewater to agglomerate into larger ones. During the process, bacteria and even larger pollution molecules can get trapped into these larger particles. Thankfully, this clumping isn鈥檛 necessarily a bad thing. Larger particles can be removed from wastewater by allowing gravity and time to pull these larger and heavier particles to the bottom of tanks taking trapped bacteria and pollutants with them. So, while wastewater may need to spend more time in the treatment facility to allow for this settling to take place, it means a cleaner wastewater in the end.

The take home message here is that wastewater treatment is important to maintain the health of our beaches, rivers, lakes and drinking water sources. UV is an effective non-chemical and chlorine-free method for wastewater disinfection. Secondary disinfectants such as ferrate have the potential to offer treatment plants the operational flexibility they need to maintain the highest treatment standards.

Based on a paper presented by Linklater, N. & 脰谤尘别肠颈, B. at聽the聽听(2015).

References

National Science Foundation, (2013). The Water Cycle. [online] Available at: [Accessed 19 Aug. 2015].