September report for Environment, Climate and Health

4 September 2019

Other conference presentations

Kayla Smurthwaite presented a poster on her PhD work on the PFAS Health Study at the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology in the Netherlands.

Outreach and engagement

Rachael Rodney Harris presented as part of the University House Research Talks series on 21 August.

Miranda Harris provided an update on the PFAS Health Study to the Environmental Health Standing Committee (enHealth) meeting.

New staff

NCEPH and the ECH group welcome Prof Sotiris Vardoulakis as Professor of Global Environmental Health.

Papers accepted/published:

  1. Gorman S, De Couten B, Lucas RM. Systematic review of the effects of ultraviolet radiation on markers of metabolic dysfunction. The Clinical Biochemist (accepted 2 Aug 2019)
  2. Horton-French K, Dunlop E, Lucas RM, Pereira G, Black LJ. Prevalence and predictors of vitamin D deficiency among African immigrants living in Australia. Int J Environ Res Public Health (accepted 8 August 2019)
  3. Merriman K, Martinez Patino N, Rodney Harris R, Block E, Santos JE, Nelson C. Neutrophil β-defensin gene expression of postpartum dairy cows is altered by prepartum dietary cation-anion difference. Journal of Dairy Science (accepted 10 Aug 2019)
  4. Dhamrait GK, Panchal K, Fleury NJ, Abel TN, Ancliffe MK, Crew RC, Croft K, Fernandez BO, Minnion M, Hart PH, Lucas RM, Mark PJ, Feelisch M, Weller RB, Matthews V, Gorman S. Characterising nitric oxide-mediated metabolic benefits of low-dose ultraviolet radiation: A focus on brown adipose tissue. Diabetologia (accepted 30 August 2019)

Progress on research projects

PFAS Health Study

The PFAS Health Study Facebook page was launched to provide information to participants about the study, a secondary benefit of the page allows us to target advertising about the roll out of the survey to participants. The pilot of the survey in the exposed communities was sent out this month, with initial invitations providing access to the online version, a reminder letter was sent two weeks later with a paper copy of the survey. The submissions to ethics committees is ongoing, with approvals slowly coming back.