The Global Environment and Health
Lecture Series, Fall 2005, UMass Amherst

Engineers Without Borders, UMass Chapter
Engineers Without Borders - USA
Engineers Without Borders - International Network
Center for Health and The Global Environment- Harvard University
International Development Enterprises
UMass Fall 2005 Related Courses
Flyer PDF

Thursday, September 29
The Arsenic Crisis in Bangladesh
Dr. Charles Harvey 

Charles Harvey is currently a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Massachusetts Institue of Technology. His main research interests are hydrogeology, geochemical transport and cycling and environmental management. His teaching focuses on subsurface chemical transport and reactions. He obtained his M.S. in 1992 from Standford University and his Ph.D. in 1996 also from Standford University.

Abstract
During the last several decades much of population of Bangladesh and West Bengal switched their water supply from surface water to groundwater in an attempt to provide water free of the pathogens that caused widespread diarrheal diseases such as cholera.  During this same period, groundwater irrigation has been adopted throughout the region, greatly increasing food production so that Bangladesh is self-sufficient in food even though the population has nearly tripled over the last forty years.  Tragically, the health of millions of people is now threatened by the dangerously high levels of arsenic in the groundwater that is pumped by many of the approximately 10 million recently installed wells.  

The high levels of dissolved arsenic, endemic to the groundwater of the Ganges delta, is caused by a specific set of geologic, hydrologic and geochemical conditions.  However, intensified agriculture is changing many of these conditions. The combined hydrologic and biogeochemical results from our field site in Bangladesh imply that the biogeochemistry of the aquifer system may not be in steady-state, and that the net effect of competing processes could either increase or decrease arsenic concentrations over the next decades.  I will describe how the hydrology and biochemistry of arsenic-contaminated aquifers are studied in the field, how our understanding of the conditions that control arsenic concentrations is
evolving, and finally suggest some ideas for approaches to the problem.

Tuesday, October 11
Engineers without Borders
Bernard Amadei

Bernard Amadei is The Founding President of Engineers Without Borders - USA  and a professor of civil engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. His main research and teaching interests are in rock mechanics and engineering geology. He obtained his M.S. degree in civil engineering from the University of Toronto and his Ph.D. degree in civil engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. In 1984, Amadei was awarded the Manuel Rocha medal from the International Society of Rock Mechanics (ISRM) for his doctoral work. He was the first recipient of the Schlumberger Lecture Award from the ISRM for excellence inrock mechanics in mid-career. He was a member of the U.S. Committee for Rock Mechanics (National Research Council) and Chairman of the ASCE Rock Mechanics Committee from 1990 to 1994. Amadei was one of the co-founders of the new American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA)

Abstract
In the next two decades, almost two billion additional people are expected to populate the Earth, 95% of them in developing or underdeveloped countries. This growth will create unprecedented demands for energy, food, land, water, transportation, materials, waste disposal, earth moving, health care, environmental cleanup, telecommunication, and infrastructure.  The role of engineers will be critical in fulfilling these demands at various scales, ranging from remote small communities to large urban areas, and mostly in the developing world.  As we enter the first half of the 21st century, the engineering profession must embrace a new mission statement—to contribute to the building of a more sustainable, stable, and equitable world.  In particular, we need to train a new generation of engineers who can better meet the challenges of the developing world and address the needs of the most destitute people on our planet.  Today, an estimated 20% of the world’s population lacks clean water, 40% lacks adequate sanitation, and 20% lacks adequate housing. Dr. Amadei will discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with practicing engineering in the developing world and the on-going work of Engineers Without Borders – USA.

Monday, October 17
Health Impacts of Global Climate Change
Dr. Paul Epstein

Paul R. Epstein, MD, MPH is Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, and is a medical doctor trained in tropical public health. Paul has worked in medical, teaching and research capacities in Africa, Asia and Latin America and, in 1993, coordinated an eight-part series on Health and Climate Change for the British medical journal, Lancet. He has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to assess the health impacts of climate change and develop health applications of climate forecasting and remote sensing.

Abstract
"Imagining the unmanageable", once an extreme scenario for the U.S., has now come to pass. The consequences of this fall’s series of hurricanes have cascaded across the landscape, overwhelming the capacities of health, ecological and economic systems to absorb, adapt to and manage the change. Just as we underestimated the rate at which climate would change, we have underestimated the biological and social responses to those changes. Infectious diseases are responding to a changed climate. Temperature constrains the range of microbes and vectors while weather affects the hosts, and timing and intensity of disease outbreaks. Ticks in Sweden are trekking north as winters warm, and models project a similar shift in the U.S. and Canada. West Nile virus is spreading in the Americas and the bird-biting Culex pipiens mosquitoes survive in warm winters and thrive in shallow pools. Over the hot, dry summer of 2002 WNV raced across the nation, stopped in 44 states, reached California and five Canadian provinces; infecting 230 species of animals, including 37 species of birds along the way. Warming will provide the conditions allowing West Nile to potentially move into Alaska. 

Global warming is retarding repair of the ‘ozone shield,’ meaning higher levels of UV radiation for years to come. Tailpipe emissions combine rapidly in the heat to form ground-level ozone or photochemical smog, causing asthma and other respiratory ills.

The drought from 1998 to 2004 - ‘the worst in 500 years’- weakened trees by drying the resin that normally drowns beetles as they bore through bark, while warming allowed beetles to overwinter, expand into higher latitudes and altitudes, and sneak in an extra generation each year. Alaskan forests - essential habitat - are threatened by numerous infestations, including spruce bark beetles, spruce budworms and leaf miners. Terrestrial and marine food webs are being disrupted. Alaskan Inuits also report an increase in accidents walking on thin ice, and increasing rates of depression and alcoholism, as thawing permafrost undermines their homes and villages.  We may also have underestimated the benefits of ending our addiction to fossil fuels. Given the proper incentives, energy efficiency, hybrid technologies, distributed generation with tidal, solar, fuel cells, wind and geothermal sources, can constitute the engine of growth for 21st Century; a clean one that can propel us into a healthier future.

Tuesday, November 15
Access and Control of Water: Combatting Rural Poverty in Developing Countries
Paul Polak

For the past 23 years, Paul Polak has worked as president of International Development Enterprises (IDE), a nonprofit, poverty alleviation organization he founded in 1981. IDE pioneered the development and marketing of affordable technologies within developing countries. The Technology Museum of Innovation named IDE-International a Laureate for its development of “Easy Drip” an affordable micro-irrigation system for rural farmers in developing countries.  In 2004, Paul was awarded Ernst & Young’s “2004 Entrepreneur of the Year” award in the category of social responsibility.  As a result of technologies like “Easy Drip” and facilitated market entrance, IDE families have increased their net annual income by more than $200 million annually.  Scientific American honored Dr. Polak as a Top 50 innovator in 2003 for his work pioneering poverty alleviation worldwide.  In 1985, IDE adopted a simple foot-powered treadle pump and marketed it to poor farmers through the private sector. To date, some two million-treadle pumps have been installed in Asia and Africa.  IDE also developed low-cost, small-scale drip systems for irrigating home gardens. In Nepal and India, 50,000 of these systems have been purchased and installed with income-generating results parallel to those achieved by the treadle pump. Dr. Polak will discuss these and other projects focusing on access and control of water to combat rural poverty in developing countries.

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