Health Canada, in collaboration with Environment and Climate Change Canada, recently completed a health impact assessment (health burden analysis) that quantified the mortality, morbidity, and monetized costs attributed to air pollution from a comprehensive list of transportation, industry, and residential sectors. The assessment applied a modelling framework combining multi-pollutant emissions inventory with spatial allocation modelling, air quality modelling, followed by health burden modelling. Modelling was applied consistently across examined sectors and therefore has been able to identify key sectors influencing air quality and contributing to the air pollution health burden. Sector-attributed health impacts have been aggregated at multiple geographic scales, including national, provincial/territorial and, for the first time, at the air zone scale. The emphasis on sectors impacting health within air zones can better inform air quality management within Canada’s Air…

What if anyone could freely download their digital neighborhood, play out different future scenarios and see the effects on environmental sustainability & livability ? And what if they could tell you what they actually wanted, didn't want, and why? What if everyone in your community was doing this, exchanging ideas with each other ?

A team at Concordia’s Next Generation Cities Institute has recently created a playable prototype of this vision. It’s called City Player and is aimed at using gamification techniques to engage the attention of citizens, collecting rich information from them about their desires for their own neighborhood, and then providing that to urban planners and other stakeholders who are planning future developments in that area.

The next steps are to go beyond this initial prototype and create a pilot project that can be deployed at the end of 2025. Concordia is partnering with ARTM (Autorité Régionale de Transport Métropolitain) and…

The development of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a serious public health threat that can turn into a global crisis if not mitigated. AMR reduces our ability to effectively combat infectious bacterial diseases and is becoming a relevant concern in food safety and sanitation. Environmental foodborne pathogens, such as Listeria monocytogenes, can develop stress response mechanisms that impact AMR, with implications for cleaning and sanitizing programs in the food industry. Understanding how food processing environments and associated activities impact the development of AMR is thus extremely important.

In addition to an ongoing issue with lack of clear terminology to characterize AMR, there is a need for standardization in the methodology and definitions of sanitizer resistance, tolerance, and susceptibility. An ongoing challenge is that different messages are conveyed in different research studies, with the translation to industry implications often being lost.…

Extreme heat events are increasing in Canada and are projected to continue to increase in the future, not only in intensity and duration, but also in geographic extent. Greater efforts to prepare for these events are therefore required as threats to individuals, communities and health systems from extreme heat increase with greater warming. Communities not currently exposed to extreme heat events may also become vulnerable to them in the future. To help public health authorities understand how vulnerability may change, this session will outline how the web portal, ClimateData.ca, can be used to explore projections for extreme heat. We will also introduce the new projections for humidex, and discuss the challenges of communicating future extreme heat risk. In addition, this interactive session will demonstrate climate data analysis tools, using specific community examples, to boost audience confidence in the use of climate data. This will help communities identify their…

Presenter: Lorraine McIntyre (Food Safety Specialist with Environmental Health Services at the BC Centre for Disease Control)

Kombucha is a fermented tea considered to be a healthy alternative to sugary soda drinks but may contain residual alcohol from the multi-step fermentation process that converts sugar to alcohol. Alcohol (ethanol) levels in kombucha beverages from samples collected through-out BC were assessed for compliance with BC regulations (non-alcoholic beverages should contain <1% ABV). Ethanol was detected by head-space gas chromatography mass spectroscopy at the Natural Health Products laboratory at BCIT. In total, 684 samples from 53 producers were collected at 142 premises from retail, restaurant, processor, farmers’ markets and other locations. Overall, 31.5% of samples had ethanol levels that exceeded the regulations (the highest level was found in restaurant kombucha at 3.62% ABV). The final report contains recommendations for alcohol control during…

In the face of worsening heat waves, typical weather, power outages, urban heat, etc., how will our buildings perform and shelter us over their lifecycle? To capture the health and productivity co-benefits and reduce liability, climate resilience and adaptation must be integrated into low energy, healthy building, and building decarbonization efforts.

This presentation will summarize health risks from climate change and overheating in buildings, and the various design guidelines and standards to limit overheating in buildings. It will also give several examples of how “climate ready” buildings with low overheating risk can be achieved cost effectively in new and existing buildings.

Tom Phillips is a consultant on healthy, sustainable buildings. For over three decades, he worked for California’s air pollution and energy agencies on indoor environmental quality, health risk reduction, and healthy green buildings. Since 2011, he has focused on…

Outbreaks of infectious foodborne diseases continue to affect populations across Canada, with potentially severe impacts on susceptible groups such as children, older adults, immune compromised individuals, and pregnant women. While some outbreaks can be rapidly attributed to localized sources that can be easily contained, globalized food systems are leading to much larger and more complex outbreaks that can be challenging to investigate. Under ideal circumstances, multiple interdisciplinary stakeholders work together to (1) identify the affected individuals and common exposures, (2) isolate the specific pathogen, (3) find the food source(s), (4) contain the outbreak, and (5) communicate investigative information to health partners and the public. Investigative models considers information from three sources: laboratory, epidemiological and food safety investigations. This presentation will summarize the findings of three reports aimed at supporting effective multidisciplinary…

The geographic range of ticks is rapidly expanding due to climate change, animal migration, and land use changes. The objective of this project was to improve understanding of the public health impacts of ticks in Canada as a result of these changes, and outline how landscape design and management strategies can be used to reduce the risk of tick encounters in parks, residential properties and other outdoor spaces. Report 1, of the four-part series, focused on the public health risks of ticks in Canada. Report 2 established the impacts of climate and land use change on tick-related risks. Report 3 reviewed the environmental management strategies to reduce tick populations. Finally, report 4 compiled these learnings into easy to use fact-sheets for use by parks professionals and users, landscape designers, and residential property owners. This presentation will summarize the key findings of this series and highlight how they can be translated into practice to reduce the risk of…

Over the past several years, cities across Canada and throughout the world have increasingly shifted their approach to delivering bikeways by following a rapid implementation or quick build approach. This approach enables the delivery of safe and comfortable cycling facilities—as well as comprehensive cycling networks—all at once and at a lower cost compared to  traditional methods. The flexibility embedded in this process also enables fast and responsive design adjustments, ensuring that as facilities are made permanent over time, they meet the needs of a broad range of users and contribute to the creation of vibrant, prosperous, and resilient communities.

Rapid implementation facilitates an urgent response to a range of critical issues facing our communities, including public health, the climate emergency, social inequity, road safety, congestion, and increasingly constrained municipal budgets. For this reason, this approach became a key strategy during the COVID-19…

Recent media and consumer interest has drawn attention to health and environmental impacts of gas cooking stoves. This attention has coincided with several municipalities implementing or considering bans on natural gas appliances in newly constructed buildings. This presentation will disentangle these recent developments by providing overview of the state of evidence linking gas stove use with incident asthma, discuss the role of nitrogen dioxide air pollution and its health impacts and then summarize climate impacts related to gas appliance use in residential environments.

Michael Brauer is a Professor in the School of Population and Public Health at The University of British Columbia and a Principal Research Scientist and Affiliate Professor at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, where he leads the Environmental, Occupational and Dietary Risk Factors team for the Global Burden of Disease. His research focuses on linkages…