Disaster Health Literacy of Middle-aged Women

As disasters have been increasing in recent years, disaster health literacy is gaining more important for a population such as middle-age women. This is because they face developmental crises (menopause) and situational crisis (disaster). Due to the growing elderly population, it is imperative to seriously consider the issue of aging women's healthcare, and their educational needs relative to emergencies and disasters. The purpose of study was to clarify the importance of disaster health literacy for middle-age women. This study is a review of the literature using PubMed, ScienceDirect, Web of Science, Google Scholar, SCOPUS, OVID, ProQuest, Springer, and Wiley. Data was collected with keywords related to the research topic (“Women's health” OR “Geriatric health”) AND (“Health literacy” OR “Disaster health literacy” OR “Disaster prevention literacy” OR “Risk knowledge” OR “Knowledge management”) AND (“Disasters” OR “Risk” OR “Crises”) in combination with the Boolean-operators OR and AND. We reviewed full text English-language articles published November 2011 November 2017. Additional references were identified from reference lists in targeted publications, review articles and books. This review demonstrated that disaster health literacy is critical for elderly women, because they may suffer from physical and psychological problems triggered by developmental crises such as menopause and situational crises such as disasters. Disaster literacy could enable them to improve resiliency and reduce disaster risk. Education has vital role in health promotion of middle-age women. Policymakers and health managers should be aware of the challenges of elderly women as a vulnerable group in disasters and develop plans to incorporate disaster health literacy for preparedness and prevention in educating this group.

[Application of bone char as an adsorbent for purification of water contaminated with hexavalent chromium]

Chromium is one of the most important heavy metals, which its high levels in drinking water lead to several health adverse effects. This study was performed aiming at determining the effects of primary concentration of six-valent chromium, adsorbent dosage, contact time, and pH on the adsorption of chromium from water on bone char. Bone char was prepared using electric furnace at 450°C for 2 h. Pulverizing of bone char was carried out by standard ASTM sieves with the range of 0.5-1 mm. The structural characteristics and specific surface area were determined through conventional methods. The samples' chromium concentration was measured at a wavelength of 450 nm. Adsorption isotherm of chromium was assessed by Freundlich, Langmuir, and Temkin adsorption equation models. The main component of Bone char is calcium hydroxylapatite with surface area of 100m[2]/g. In this study, adsorption reached the equilibrium at lapse of 120 min, and the increase of adsorbent dose up to 0.7g/100ml leaded to increase in the chromium adsorption. However, higher level had no effect on adsorption efficiency. The results showed optimum adsorption took place better in acidic range of pH [pH=3]. Adsorption isotherm of chromium on bone char follows the Langmuir and Temkin models, and the maximum adsorption capacity the dimensionless coefficient [RL] were 2.025 mg/g and 0.15, respectively which indicates that an appropriate adsorption of chromium on bone char. Bone char is an inexpensive adsorbent, which can be used for adsorption of chromium from water based on surface properties