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- Creators: Arizona State University
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In recent years, overall consumption of meat products has been decreasing, and at the same time vegetarianism is on the rise. A variety of factors are likely driving changes in consumers' attitudes towards, and consumption of, meat products. Although concern regarding animal welfare may contribute to these trends, growing consumer interest in the roles that production and processing of meat play in terms of environmental degradation could also impact individuals' decisions about the inclusion of meat in their diets. Because these factors could be related to moral attitudes as well, the purpose of this study was to explore the relations among meat consumption, general environmental attitudes, and moral `foundations' of decision-making, including concern about minimizing `harm' and maximizing `care,' as well as issues of `purity' and `sanctity.' A survey was conducted among current college students using the New Ecological Paradigm scale and the Moral Foundations Questionnaire to assess environmental and moral attitudes. A food frequency questionnaire was used to assess meat consumption. Multiple linear regression analyses explored the relations of environmental and moral attitudes with meat consumption, controlling for potential confounding variables. The results showed no significant correlations among meat consumption, environmental attitudes or moral foundations of harm/care and purity/sanctity.
ContributorsSpringer, LeeAnn (Author) / Wharton, Christopher (Christopher Mack), 1977- (Thesis advisor) / Hekler, Eric (Thesis advisor) / Ohri-Vachaspati, Punam (Committee member) / Hall, Rick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
During the months from June to November 2012, the city of Bangalore was faced with a serious solid waste management (SWM) crisis. In the wake of the upheaval, the state court declared source segregation to be mandatory. Yet, while the legislation was clear, the pathway towards a course of action for the transition was not clear and hence, Bangalore was stuck in a state of limbo. The objectives for this thesis spiraled organically from this crisis. The first objective was to examine the gaps in Bangalore's transition to a more sustainable SWM system. Six particular gaps were identified, which in essence, were opportunities to re-shape the system. The gaps identified included: conflicting political agendas, the exclusion of some key actors, and lack of adequate attention to cultural aspects, provision of appropriate incentives, protection of livelihoods and promotion of innovation. Opportunities were found in better incentivization of sustainable SWM goals, protecting livelihoods that depend on waste, enhancing innovation and endorsing local, context based SWM solutions. Building on this understanding of gaps, the second objective was to explore an innovative, local, bottom-up waste-management model called the Vellore Zero Waste Model, and assess its applicability to Bangalore. The adaptability of the model depended on several factors such as, willingness of actors to redefine their roles and change functions, ability of the municipality to assure quality and oversight, willingness of citizen to source segregate, and most importantly, the political will and collective action needed to ensure and sustain the transition. The role of communication as a vital component to facilitate productive stakeholder engagement and to promote role change was evident. Therefore, the third objective of the study was to explore how interpersonal competencies and communication strategies could be used as a tool to facilitate stakeholder engagement and encourage collective action. In addressing these objectives, India was compared with Austria because Austria is often cited as having some of the best SWM practices in the world and has high recycling rates to show for its reputation.
ContributorsRengarajan, Nivedita (Author) / Aggarwal, Rimjhim (Thesis advisor) / Chhetri, Nalini (Committee member) / Manuel-Navarrete, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Many manmade chemicals used in consumer products are ultimately washed down the drain and are collected in municipal sewers. Efficient chemical monitoring at wastewater treatment (WWT) plants thus may provide up-to-date information on chemical usage rates for epidemiological assessments. The objective of the present study was to extrapolate this concept, termed 'sewage epidemiology', to include municipal sewage sludge (MSS) in identifying and prioritizing contaminants of emerging concern (CECs). To test this the following specific aims were defined: i) to screen and identify CECs in nationally representative samples of MSS and to provide nationwide inventories of CECs in U.S. MSS; ii) to investigate the fate and persistence in MSS-amended soils, of sludge-borne hydrophobic CECs; and iii) to develop an analytical tool relying on contaminant levels in MSS as an indicator for identifying and prioritizing hydrophobic CECs. Chemicals that are primarily discharged to the sewage systems (alkylphenol surfactants) and widespread persistent organohalogen pollutants (perfluorochemicals and brominated flame retardants) were analyzed in nationally representative MSS samples. A meta-analysis showed that CECs contribute about 0.04-0.15% to the total dry mass of MSS, a mass equivalent of 2,700-7,900 metric tonnes of chemicals annually. An analysis of archived mesocoms from a sludge weathering study showed that 64 CECs persisted in MSS/soil mixtures over the course of the experiment, with half-lives ranging between 224 and >990 days; these results suggest an inherent persistence of CECs that accumulate in MSS. A comparison of the spectrum of chemicals (n=52) analyzed in nationally representative biological specimens from humans and MSS revealed 70% overlap. This observed co-occurrence of contaminants in both matrices suggests that MSS may serve as an indicator for ongoing human exposures and body burdens of pollutants in humans. In conclusion, I posit that this novel approach in sewage epidemiology may serve to pre-screen and prioritize the several thousands of known or suspected CECs to identify those that are most prone to pose a risk to human health and the environment.
ContributorsVenkatesan, Arjunkrishna (Author) / Halden, Rolf U. (Thesis advisor) / Westerhoff, Paul (Committee member) / Fox, Peter (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Research has demonstrated that temperature and relative humidity substantially influence overall perceptions of indoor air quality (Fang, Clausen, & Fanger, 1998). This finding places temperature quality as a high priority, especially for vulnerable adults over 60. Temperature extremes and fluctuation, as well as the perception of those conditions, affect physical performance, thermal comfort and health of older adults (Chatonnet & Cabanac, 1965, pp. 185-6; Fumiharu, Watanabe, Park, Shephard, & Aoyagi, 2005; Heijs & Stringer, 1988). The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) have developed thermal-comfort standards for working-age, healthy individuals. None of these standards address the physiological and psychological needs of older adults (ASHRAE Standard 55, 2010; ISO-7730, 2005). This dissertation investigates the impacts of thermal conditions on self-reported health and perceived comfort for older adults, hypothesizing that warmer and more-table indoor thermal conditions will increase the health and perceived comfort of these adults. To this end, a new set of thermal comfort metrics was designed and tested to address the thermal preferences of older adults. The SENIOR COMFORT Metrics 2013 outlined new thresholds for optimal indoor high and low temperatures and set limits on thermal variability over time based on the ASHRAE-55 2010 model. This study was conducted at Sunnyslope Manor, a multi-unit, public-housing complex in the North Phoenix. Nearly 60% (76 of 118) of the residents (aged 62-82) were interviewed using a 110-question, self-reporting survey in 73 apartment units. A total of 40 questions and 20 sub-questions addressing perceptions of comfort, pain, sleep patterns, injuries, and mood were extracted from this larger health condition survey to assess health and thermal comfort. Indoor environmental thermal measurements included temperature in three locations: kitchen, living area, and bedroom and data were recorded every 15 minutes over 5 full days and 448 points. Study results start to indicate that older adults for Sunnyslope Manor preferred temperatures between 76 and 82.5 degrees Fahrenheit and that lower temperatures as outlined by ASHRAE-55 2010 increases the rate of injuries and mood changes in older adults among other findings.
ContributorsFonseca, Ernesto (Author) / Bryan, Harvey (Thesis advisor) / Ahrentzen, Sherry (Committee member) / Shea, Kimberly (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2013
Description
Growers and the USDA showed increasing favor for agricultural chemicals over cultural and biological forms of pest control through the first half of the twentieth century. With the introduction of DDT and other synthetic chemicals to commercial markets in the post-World War II era, pesticides became entrenched as the primary form of pest control in the industrial agriculture production system. Despite accumulating evidence that some pesticides posed a threat to human and environmental health, growers and government exercised path-dependent behavior in the development and implementation of pest control strategies. As pests developed resistance to regimens of agricultural chemicals, growers applied pesticides with greater toxicity in higher volumes to their fields with little consideration for the unintended consequences of using the economic poisons. Consequently, pressure from non-governmental organizations proved a necessary predicate for pesticide reform. This dissertation uses a series of case studies to examine the role of non-governmental organizations, particularly environmental organizations and farmworker groups, in pesticide reform from 1962 to 2011. For nearly fifty years, these groups served as educators, communicating scientific and experiential information about the adverse effects of pesticides on human health and environment to the public, and built support for the amendment of pesticide policies and the alteration of pesticide use practices. Their efforts led to the passage of more stringent regulations to better protect farmworkers, the public, and the environment. Environmental organizations and farmworker groups also acted as watchdogs, monitoring the activity of regulatory agencies and bringing suit when necessary to ensure that they fulfilled their responsibilities to the public. This dissertation will build on previous scholarly work to show increasing collaboration between farmworker groups and environmental organizations. It argues that the organizations shared a common concern about the effects of pesticides on human health, which enabled bridge-builders within the disparate organizations to foster cooperative relationships. Bridge-building proved a mutually beneficial exercise. Variance in organizational strategies and the timing of different reform efforts limited, but did not eliminate, opportunities for collaboration. Coalitions formed when groups came together temporarily, and then drifted apart when a reform effort reached its terminus, leaving future collaboration still possible.
ContributorsTompkins, Adam (Author) / Hirt, Paul (Thesis advisor) / Rome, Adam (Committee member) / Adamson, Joni (Committee member) / Rosales, F (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Pro-environmental goals often pit immediate self-interest against future communal interest. Consequently, the motivation to behave in pro-environmental ways can be particularly difficult to maintain over time. By framing environmental ills as threats to one's chronic concerns, I suggest that chronic motivations, such as disease avoidance, can be leveraged to engender longer-lasting pro-environmental motivation. Specifically, I suggest that three distinct categories of environmental ills should be associated with distinct chronic concerns, and that the mechanisms that regulate these concerns should also regulate reactions to related environmental ills: pollution should engage a pathogenic disgust mechanism, wastefulness a moral disgust mechanism, and framing environmental outcomes as posing safety concerns should be linked to fear and anger mechanisms. Results of four experiments did not lend consistent support to the hypotheses. Neither situationally primed concerns nor motivation-relevant individual differences produced consistent results suggesting an association between the proposed motivations and the relevant environmental outcomes.
ContributorsBerlin, Joy (Author) / Neuberg, Steven L. (Thesis advisor) / Kenrick, Douglas T. (Committee member) / Ledlow, Susan E (Committee member) / Shiota, Michelle N. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
I present the results of studies from two historically separate fields of research: heat related illness and human thermal comfort adaptation. My research objectives were: (a) to analyze the relationships between climate and heat related morbidity in Phoenix, Arizona and Chicago, Illinois; (b) explore possible linkages of human thermal comfort adaptation to heat-related illness; and (c) show possible benefits of collaboration between the two fields of research. Previous climate and mortality studies discovered regional patterns in summertime mortality in North America: lower in hot, southern cities compared to more temperate cities. I examined heat related emergency (911) dispatches from these two geographically and climatically different cities. I analyzed with local weather conditions with 911 dispatches identified by responders as "heat" related from 2001 to 2006 in Phoenix and 2003 through 2006 in Chicago. Both cities experienced a rapid rise in heat-related dispatches with increasing temperature and heat index, but at higher thresholds in Phoenix. Overall, Phoenix had almost two and half times more heat-related dispatches than Chicago. However, Phoenix did not experience the large spikes of heat-related dispatches that occurred in Chicago. These findings suggest a resilience to heat-related illness that may be linked to acclimatization in Phoenix. I also present results from a survey based outdoor human thermal comfort field study in Phoenix to assess levels of local acclimatization. Previous research in outdoor human thermal comfort in hot humid and temperate climates used similar survey-based methodologies and found higher levels of thermal comfort (adaptation to heat) that in warmer climates than in cooler climates. The study presented in this dissertation found outdoor thermal comfort thresholds and heat tolerance levels in Phoenix were higher than previous studies from temperate climates more similar to Chicago. These differences were then compared to the differences in weather conditions associated with heat-related dispatches. The higher comfort thresholds in Phoenix were similar in scale to the climate differences associated with the upsurge in heat-related dispatches in Phoenix and Chicago. This suggests a link between heat related illness and acclimatization, and illustrates potential for collaboration in research between the two fields.
ContributorsHartz, Donna (Author) / Brazel, Anthony J. (Thesis advisor) / Heisler, Gordon (Committee member) / Cerveny, Randal (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
Food deserts are the collection of deprived food environments and limit local residents from accessing healthy and affordable food. This dissertation research in San Lorenzo, Paraguay tests if the assumptions about food deserts in the Global North are also relevant to the Global South. In the Global South, the recent growth of supermarkets is transforming local food environments and may worsen residential food access, such as through emerging more food deserts globally. This dissertation research blends the tools, theories, and frameworks from clinical nutrition, public health, and anthropology to identify the form and impact of food deserts in the market city of San Lorenzo, Paraguay. The downtown food retail district and the neighborhood food environment in San Lorenzo were mapped to assess what stores and markets are used by residents. The food stores include a variety of formal (supermarkets) and informal (local corner stores and market vendors) market sources. Food stores were characterized using an adapted version of the Nutrition Environment Measures Survey for Stores (NEMS-S) to measure store food availability, affordability, and quality. A major goal in this dissertation was to identify how and why residents select a type of food store source over another using various ethnographic interviewing techniques. Residential store selection was linked to the NEMS-S measures to establish a connection between the objective quality of the local food environment, residential behaviors in the local food environment, and nutritional health status. Using a sample of 68 households in one neighborhood, modeling suggested the quality of local food environment does effect weight (measure as body mass index), especially for those who have lived longer in poorer food environments. More generally, I find that San Lorenzo is a city-wide food desert, suggesting that research needs to establish more nuanced categories of poor food environments to address how food environments emerge health concerns in the Global South.
ContributorsGartin, Meredith (Author) / Brewis Slade, Alexandra (Thesis advisor) / Boone, Christopher (Committee member) / Wutich, Amber (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) had identified and recommended air quality monitoring to take place at 63 schools throughout the country. Unfortunately, tribal schools were not considered during the time USEPA conducted the analysis. The importance of identifying any air toxic pollutants affecting school children needs to be analyzed. Conducting an air monitoring toxic analysis on the Navajo Nation at Church Rock Elementary School, Church Rock, New Mexico (CRNM) was carried out. The current school location posed a concern, in regards to the surrounding stationary, mobile, and natural emissions emitted all types of toxic pollutants. USEPA sponsors various air monitoring program, which Tribal Air Monitoring Support (TAMS) program undertook, and offered tribal programs, organizations or agencies to utilized air monitoring equipment's. The air monitoring setup was conducted with the contract Eastern Research Group, Inc. (ERG) laboratory, where collection of 24-hour ambient air samples for 60 days on a 6-day sampling interval were performed. The analysis for volatile organic compounds (VOCs)were collected from canister samples using USEPA Compendium Method TO-15, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from polyurethane foam (PUF) and XAD-2 resin samples using USEPA Compendium Method TO-13A. Carbonyl compounds were collected by sorbent cartridge samples using USEPA Compendium Method TO-11A, and trace of metals from filters were sampled using USEPA Compendium Method IO-3.5 and FEM EQL-0512-202. A total of 53 VOC concentrations were greater than 1 μg/m3, where dichlorodifluoromethane, trichlorofluoromethane, chloromethane, dichloromethane, propylene, toluene, acrolein and acetylene were detected. A total of 23 carbonyl compound concentrations were greater than 1 μg/m3, where acetone and formaldehyde were measured. Naphthalene average with the highest average for PAHs, where phenanthrene and retene were the second and third highest averages. As for the metals the highest averages resulted from manganese, chromium and lead. Overall, the air toxic pollutants resulted from CRNM surrounding monitoring site were detected. Identifying the potential emitter source or sources cannot be assessed.
ContributorsBilley, Karmen (Author) / Olson, Larry (Thesis advisor) / Peterson, Danny (Committee member) / Brown, Albert (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
Description
This dissertation focuses on the application of urban metabolism metrology (UMM) to process streams of the natural and built water environment to gauge public health concerning exposure to carcinogenic N-nitrosamines and abuse of narcotics. A survey of sources of exposure to N-nitrosamines in the U.S. population identified contaminated food products (1,900 ± 380 ng/day) as important drivers of attributable cancer risk (Chapter 2). Freshwater sediments in the proximity of U.S. municipal wastewater treatment plants were shown for the first time to harbor carcinogenic N-nitrosamine congeners, including N-nitrosodibutylamine (0.2-3.3 ng/g dw), N-nitrosodiphenylamine (0.2-4.7 ng/g dw), and N-nitrosopyrrolidine (3.4-19.6 ng/g dw) were, with treated wastewater discharge representing one potential factor contributing to the observed contamination (p=0.42) (Chapter 3). Opioid abuse rates in two small midwestern communities were estimated through the application of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE). Average concentrations of opioids (City 1; City 2) were highest for morphine (713 ± 38, 306 ± 29 ng/L) and varied by for the remainder of the screened analytes. Furthermore, concentrations of the powerful opioid fentanyl (1.7 ± 0.2, 1.0 ± 0.5 ng/L) in wastewater were reported for the first time in the literature for the U.S. (Chapter 4). To gauge narcotic consumption within college-aged adults the WBE process used in Chapter 4 was applied to wastewater collected from a large university in the Southwestern U.S. Estimated narcotics consumption, in units of mg/day/1,000 persons showed the following rank order: cocaine (470 ± 42), heroin (474 ± 32), amphetamine (302 ± 14) and methylphenidate (236 ± 28). Most parental drugs and their respective metabolites showed detection frequencies in campus wastewater of 80% or more, with the notable exception of fentanyl, norfentanyl, buprenorphine, and norbuprenorphine. Estimated consumption of all narcotics, aside from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder medication, were higher than values reported in previous U.S. WBE studies for U.S. campuses (Chapter 5). The analyses presented here have identified variation in narcotic consumption habits across different U.S. communities, which can be gauged through UMM. Application of these techniques should be implemented throughout U.S. communities to provide insight into ongoing substance abuse and health issues within a community.
ContributorsGushgari, Adam Jon (Author) / Halden, Rolf U. (Thesis advisor) / Kavazanjian, Edward (Committee member) / Fraser, Matthew (Committee member) / Venkatesan, Arjun (Committee member) / Mascaro, Giuseppe (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018