Symptomatic Response of the Elderly with Cardiovascular Disease during a Heat Wave in Slovenia.

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study is to analyse the symptomatic response of elderly people to heat burden and indoor air quality exposure, and to create an index, the basis on which healthcare workers could react and prevent heat-related illnesses when the first symptoms appear. METHODS: The impact of the indoor thermal environment was studied with regards to Humidex and indoor air quality by CO2 concentrations on elderly people's symptomatic response. It was a natural experiment in which two different groups of elderly people (>65 years) were observed: the first group had a diagnosed cardiovascular disease, and the second group did not have the disease. RESULTS: The results show that the expression and aggravation of symptoms are related to an increase of heat burden and low indoor air quality. The symptoms under analysis do not have the same frequency distribution of intensity and, therefore, cannot be interpreted as a single universal symptom index. Instead, two indices must be created separately for both general and specific symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Healthcare workers should be educated about the interactive influences of the thermal environment and the air quality on health. Unsuitable conditions could be ascertained by the nursing home occupants' symptomatic response.

Health impact assessment of liquid biofuel production.

Bioethanol and biodiesel as potential substitutes for fossil fuels in the transportation sector have been analyzed for environmental suitability. However, there could be impacts on human health during the production, therefore adverse health effects have to be analyzed. The aim of this study is to analyze to what health risk factors humans are exposed to in the production of biofuels and what the size of the health effects is. A health impact assessment expressed as disability adjusted life years (DALYs) was conducted in SimaPro 7.1 software. The results show a statistically significant lower carcinogenic impact of biofuels (p < 0.05) than fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the impact of organic respirable compounds is smaller for fossil fuels (p < 0.05) than for biofuels. Analysis of inorganic compounds like PM10,2.5, SO2 or NO(x) shows some advantages of sugar beet bioethanol and soybean biodiesel production (p < 0.05), although production of sugarcane bioethanol shows larger impacts of respirable inorganic compounds than for fossil fuels (p < 0.001). Although liquid biofuels are made of renewable energy sources, this does not necessary mean that they do not represent any health hazards.