Industrial Hygiene

NC OSHERC NORA Seminar Series

About the webinars: The North Carolina Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center invites you to join them for the NORA Interdisciplinary Seminar Series. This series was established in 2002, and has been offered quarterly since 2005, typically in the months of February, April, August, and November. The seminars are fully virtual via Zoom and a recording link is available on the web page a few days after each seminar. This enables distance education students and others in the broader occupational health and safety community to attend and participate, facilitating...

Household Energy and Health: What's Come and What's to Come

Ajay Pillarisetti
2022

Between 3 and 4 billion people globally rely on the inefficient combustion of solid fuels – including wood, dung, crop residues, and charcoal – to meet basic household energy needs. The household air pollution resulting from these activities is a major contributor to the global burden disease, mainly through particulate pollution exposure that results in an estimated 2.3 million deaths yearly, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. This talk will provide a historical perspective on the identification of solid fuel combustion as a health risk, with a focus on the...

Exposure-response relationships for personal exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2·5), carbon monoxide, and black carbon and birthweight: an observational analysis of the multicountry Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial

Kalpana Balakrishnan
Kyle Steenland
Thomas Clasen
Howard Chang
Michael Johnson
Ajay Pillarisetti
Wenlu Ye
Luke P Naeher
Anaite Diaz-Artiga
John P McCracken
Lisa M Thompson
Ghislaine Rosa
Miles A Kirby
Gurusamy Thangavel
Sankar Sambandam
Krishnendu Mukhopadhyay
Naveen Puttaswamy
Vigneswari Aravindalochanan
Sarada Garg
Florien Ndagijimana
Stella Hartinger
Lindsay J Underhill
Katherine A Kearns
Devan Campbell
Jacob Kremer
Lance Waller
Shirin Jabbarzadeh
Jiantong Wang
Yunyun Chen
Joshua Rosenthal
Ashlinn Quinn
Aris T Papageorghiou
Usha Ramakrishnan
Penelope P Howards
William Checkley
Jennifer L Peel
HAPIN Investigators
2023

Background: Household air pollution (HAP) from solid fuel use is associated with adverse birth outcomes, but data for exposure-response relationships are scarce. We examined associations between HAP exposures and birthweight in rural Guatemala, India, Peru, and Rwanda during the Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial.

Methods: The HAPIN trial recruited pregnant women (9-<20 weeks of gestation) in rural Guatemala, India, Peru, and Rwanda and randomly allocated them to receive a liquefied petroleum gas stove or not (ie, and...

Fidelity and Adherence to a Liquefied Petroleum Gas Stove and Fuel Intervention during Gestation: The Multi-Country Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) Randomized Controlled Trial

Ashlinn K Quinn
Kendra N Williams
Lisa M Thompson
Steven A Harvey
Ricardo Piedrahita
Jiantong Wang
Casey Quinn
Ajay Pillarisetti
John P McCracken
Joshua P Rosenthal
Miles A Kirby
Anaité Diaz Artiga
Gurusamy Thangavel
Ghislaine Rosa
J Jaime Miranda
William Checkley
Jennifer L Peel
Thomas F Clasen
2021

Background: Clean cookstove interventions can theoretically reduce exposure to household air pollution and benefit health, but this requires near-exclusive use of these types of stoves with the simultaneous disuse of traditional stoves. Previous cookstove trials have reported low adoption of new stoves and/or extensive continued traditional stove use.

Methods: The Household Air Pollution Intervention Network (HAPIN) trial randomized 3195 pregnant women in Guatemala, India, Peru, and Rwanda to either a liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) stove and fuel...

Why a Workplace Barrier Face Covering is a Bad Idea

Mark Nicas
2023
Editor's Note: This is a commentary on “Barrier Face Coverings for Workers” by Lisa Brosseau and Jeffrey Stull, which appeared in NEW SOLUTIONS 32(3). Abstract It has been proposed that enhanced cloth masks (barrier face coverings (BFCs)) be worn by workers as respiratory protection against airborne SARS-CoV-2. This commentary argues that promoting BFC use is a backward step in protecting workers. BFCs cannot meet NIOSH and OSHA respirator performance standards; superior NIOSH-approved respirators are...

A decoupling method to compute near field and far field exposure concentrations

Mark Nicas
2024

In the near field/far field (NF/FF) dispersion construct, the analytical solutions for the NF and FF concentration equations, respectively denoted CNF(t) and CFF(t) in mg/m3, are coupled in their mathematical derivation. Depending on the form of the contaminant emission rate function G(t) (mg/min), deriving CNF(t) and CFF(t) can range from being relatively easy to impossible. A method is presented to more easily approximate these concentration functions. The method decouples the NF and FF equations by treating the NF as an isolated well-mixed space with volume VNF (m3) and supply/...

Correcting Coal Miner Respirator Total Inward Leakage Values for Respiratory Tract Deposition

Mark Nicas
2023

The great majority of workplace respirator efficacy studies have measured total inward leakage (TIL) for particulate contaminants. One of the first such studies, designated the Harris study, was conducted in the early 1970s in US underground coal mines. As in other particle-based studies, inside-the-facepiece dust sampling was continuously conducted across the inhalation and exhalation phases of the breathing cycle, although unlike in other studies, respirable dust cyclones were used in air sampling. Because exhaled air was partially depleted of dust particles due to deposition in...

06/10/25: Artificial Intelligence Use in Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health

About the webinar:

This presentation will explore the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) within the Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health (OESH) profession, highlighting both current and emerging applications. The content will primarily be based on insights and findings from a recent collaborative paper published by the American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA), offering a practical perspective on how AI is shaping the future of OESH practice.

Exploring relationships between smoke exposure, housing characteristics, and preterm birth in California

Rachel Sklar
Sally Picciotto
Dan Meltzer
Dana E. Goin
ShihMing Huang
Frederick Lurmann
Elizabeth Noth, PhD, CIH
Nathan Pavlovic
Rachel Morello-Frosch
Amy M. Padula
2024

Pregnant people are vulnerable to air pollution exposure, including risk of preterm birth, low birth weight, and stillbirth. Understanding the infiltration of outdoor wildfire smoke into a residential space is critical for the accurate assessment of wildfire smoke exposure and associated health effects in pregnant people. Relying on ambient measurements of wildfire smoke alone can result in exposure misclassification. In this study, we examine the role of physical housing characteristics in the relationship between smoke exposure and preterm birth. In particular, we examine the...