- You know, during COVID, everybody was at home, not really going places. So, just the average person was thinking, "Wow, the air is cleaner." And you heard a lot of things about more animals coming out, as people were quarantining and isolating at their houses. And so it's just that traffic had diminished, in a sense, and just people were not moving around as much. And so you had this sense, that there was gonna be an air pollution impact, but how do you measure it? You know, how do you really get a sense of, if the air is cleaner, how do you know it's cleaner, and what impact may it have? What lessons can we learn from this pandemic for the future? - [Announcer] You're listening to Further Together, the ORAU podcast. Join Michael Holtz and his guests, for conversations about all things ORAU. They'll talk about ORAU story history. Our impact on an ever-changing world. Our innovative, scientific and technical solutions for our customers, and our commitment to the communities where we do business. Welcome to Further Together, the ORAU podcast. - Happy Wednesday. And welcome to another episode of Further Together, the ORU podcast, and, might I say, the ORAU video cast. This is our first episode of Further Together for ORAU, featuring video, and I'm ecstatic that my first test subject for this, for ORAU is Davyda Hammond. Dr Davyda Hammond is an environmental health engineer, in the ORAU Epidemiology and Exposure Sciences Group. And Davyda, if you would, before we get into the research with the University of Houston, and the great work you're doing as part of ODRD, tell us how you got to ORAU? - Thank you, Michael. I started at ORAU in 2014. I had been working as an Engineering Professor in Virginia, and my husband was called to pastor a church in Oak Ridge. So, he is reason why we moved to the area. And when he said he got called to Oak Ridge, I was so ecstatic. I was just like, "Oh my gosh! There is so much science in Oak Ridge. It's gonna be the best place forever, for my career. They have environmental issues. They have great science. I was just leaping off the wall, and he couldn't understand. So of course, I thought that I would work at ORNL. I applied for maybe six different positions at ORNL. For some reason, things weren't working out. And so a church member mentioned that she had worked ORAU before, that I should apply. And that's what happened. I applied, and I was put into the temp pool, and Jeff saw my resume, and he gave me an interview. And from there, I ended up working on Safety Culture Projects for ORAU. So, it was word of mouth, but great word of mouth from the community on the work that ORAU does, that people just say, "Hey, this is a great place to work, so you should apply." So I'm glad I did. - Awesome. Well, we're glad you did too. And I know you do a lot of great work with the Safety Culture and Exposure Sciences Group, and that's what we're gonna talk about today. You're dealing, for those of us who've heard us talk about research at ORU before, you are dealing in ORU-Directed Research and Development Project, with the University of Houston, that focuses on Air Pollution Particulate Matter, as it relates to COVID. And so talk a little bit about just the basics of that research project and what you're doing? - Sure. You know, during COVID everybody was at home, not really going places. So, just the average person was thinking, "Wow, the air is cleaner." You know, you heard a lot of things about more animals coming out, as people were quarantining and isolating at their houses. And so it's just that traffic had diminished, in a sense, and people were not moving around as much. And so you had this sense, that there was gonna be an air pollution impact, but how do you measure it? You know, how do you really get a sense of, if the air is cleaner, how do you know it's cleaner, and what impact may it have? What lessons can we learn from this pandemic for the future? And one thing that was interesting to me is that we know before COVID that there are disparities in regard to air pollution exposure. You have some communities that have more exposure because they're closer to point sources; refineries, power plants, you name it, different type of factories. And so I wanted to see, Hey, during COVID, do you still have those disparities? Are things changing for those communities that received the brunt of the exposures, and are they improving in a positive way? So I thought that that was an interesting question, especially, as we consider some of the other ramifications of COVID. More people are moving away from big cities and moving to rural areas, so really, what does that impact also? If people from the cities are moving out, then air pollution is changing, in a sense. Those rural areas are going to get more air pollution, in a sense, more traffic, more businesses, more factories possibly coming to those areas. So, it's just a bunch of interesting questions to think about and want to investigate. And one thing we wanted to do is that you have two primary air pollutants that most people think about. You think about ozone, and you think about particulate matter. - Right. - So in this research, we want to understand a little bit about both. - And so, when you talk about the disparities, one of the things I think is important to point out is a lot of times you're talking about racial disparities, because often it's the underserved communities that are in these areas of high pollution in- - Right. - urban areas, right? So. - Right. - It's almost doubly important, right, to answer that question, 'cause you're talking about people who have other health equity issues, and then you're sort of including this ozone exposure, particulate matter exposure, on top of everything else that plagues these communities already. - Right. And there's a distrust in these communities, because you have these factories or these other large point sources that are causing health effects, call asthma among children. And they know that there's a connection, just logically common sense, but a lot of times we don't have the data to prove it. And so, one of the things I'm very interested in is providing communities useful data that they can use, to advocate for their own health issues and the promotion of their communities. - Excellent. So you working with the university of Houston. How did your relationship with the university of Houston, come to be, basically, how did you and the research folks there start working together on this project? - Oh, that's pretty funny. So when I was just thinking about these research questions and knew I wanted to apply for this opportunity to ORU, they mentioned that you needed a few things. You needed Data Science. You needed Public Health, and you needed, there's a third one, Disparities Research. And so I knew that I could hit two of those easily, what was going to be my weakness was the Data Science. How could we use remote sensing, or artificial intelligence, or big data sets, to address this air pollution question? So I just started doing a LinkedIn search. I start looking for people who do particular matter research related to AI. And this professor came up Dr. Choi, at university of Houston. He is the Lead of the Air Quality Lab. He does modeling using CMAC. You know, that's the number one type model that you use for this type of work. And so he was just checking all of the boxes. And so I just called, emailed him, told him, you know we have this opportunity at ORU, to partner together to do research. I know you probably have a lot of research projects, but if you find COVID Air Pollution interesting, and you wanna partner together, then Hey, I would love to talk to you. And he responded with a yes, and then we just went forward from there. It has been a great partnership for me to not know him, and for him to not know me, and the trust we've been able to develop. You know, I am definitely very blessed for the experience and thankful that it has worked out so well. - That's awesome. So basically from a cold call. - Yes. - You're doing this amazing research project. Where are you all in the process of your research? - Well, we have been moving quite fast and a lot of that is due to the university of Houston, they are excellent at what they do. They thought it was gonna take somewhere from six to eight months to complete their modeling. So what we are trying to do, what makes this novel is that you have air pollution monitors in major cities, and you have some in rural areas. But of course, you can't put an air pollution monitor in every community that you're interested in studying. We just don't have the resources and infrastructure and land to do that. So what they are doing is using satellite images, to come up estimates at the five kilometer level. So we're talking neighborhood level. Air pollution measurements, that we could use to say, Hey, now if we have a larger city, we can distinguished the differences between one community and one neighborhood versus another. And so you really can't do that with the central monitoring station in the city. So that is the interesting piece about this. It is a better measure of the neighborhood differences so that we can understand these environmental justice questions better. So they were able to do that at the five kilometer level, for seven different states. And we're focusing on the Southeast east. So those seven states, they did that whole piece, we have our air pollution data. And now we are in the process of gathering the demographic data to help us say, well, if we look at differences by income, or we look at differences by education, or by race, ethnicity, what differences do we see between 2019 and 2020? Were the exposures increased for certain groups? Did they decrease for certain groups, and are these decreases or increasing significant? Meaning, do they pass the scientific test to say that they are scientifically different? Because if they are significant, then that is information that we will wanna publish and get out to the public, because this is important information to know. Because many of the health researchers say, Hey, this is not the last pandemic we're going to be dealing with. - Right. - What lessons can we learn from this pandemic for the future, to try to protect these communities if they are receiving higher exposures due to this pandemic? - That is incredibly fascinating work. I mean, there's so much going on that will be beneficial. Is the model that the university of Houston folks build, will that be transferable then to other communities, other states, or does it depend on, I guess, the situation? - It depends on the situation, they have published their work. So it's out there for other researchers to digest, and mimic for other studies. One thing that we're interested in doing is that this research focuses on PM 2.5 and ozone, as a overall measurement. But within particular matter, you have all of these different elements. And all of these different elements, when you think about heavy metals, you have lead, you have mercury, you have selenium, you have all of these elements that are attributed to sometimes, the different point sources, that are in that neighborhood. So the next step for this research what we wanna do is get funding to say, Hey, instead of just looking at total particulates at the five kilometer level, we wanna look at all of the constituent elements in it. And from there, we can understand at the community level, what sources are impacting that community the most. So, from then it becomes very tailored air pollution exposure. You know, we will be able to say, well, in this community about 50% of the makeup is due to, let's say an auto body plant that is right next door to that community. Or we could say, there's an incinerator, that's impacting this community about 30% of their air pollution. And we know, that these point sources have very specific elements that are attributed to their exhaust, which we can link to certain health outcomes. So that is the key piece. When we have at piece, it would be such a wealth of data for community groups to use, to say, Hey, our community is being impacted. Our leaders need to do something about this, and we're not just saying this from an emotional point of view. We're saying this from a hard science point of view. - And it's not just anecdotal evidence anymore. It's, - Exactly. - We know this is happening, and so these people in this area are affected by that. So you're closing the goal, if you can get the additional funding? Is really to close a loop between the health outcomes that we're seeing, and how those health outcomes have come about? - Yes. - Which is both exciting, but also probably a little scary at the same time. - Yeah. It's a little overwhelming. You know. - It's a lot of research that has not been done before at this level. So, one of the bigger questions is, if we're not using raw data collected at that community site and we're using this technology to make an estimate, how do you know that that estimate is right? If I have a filter that has air pollution on it, and I run that filter through a machine that measures the particulate and the elements, and that's one thing. But now I'm just using a satellite image, and saying that this is going to me a true estimate. How do I know that's a true estimate? And we've been using Google mobility data to verify what we're doing? We've been using meteorology data. So, the published research from the university of Houston has pretty much made the case, that this is valid information. This is valid data to be able to use for public health research. So that's the exciting part that we have now, this new data set, where we could get closer and closer to the community level. - The university of Houston has published research on the data. What happens from your perspective? Is there a paper forth coming? - Yes - Will there be citations, all of that great stuff. - Yes, of course. We wanna get the word out. So ORU, our side is really focused on the Public Health part of the research. Whereas university of Houston, was the Air Pollution Modeling Research. - Gotcha. - They have finished their work but we couldn't begin our work, 'til they've finished their work. - Right. - So, their paper was just published last month. And so. - okay. - You know, this is fresh information. So now we are going through our process, and there are some very interesting results that are coming out of it. I don't wanna spoil it just yet, because, - Sure, sure. - we're still in our validation piece. But we are hoping to get a manuscript at least out for reviews, sometime in April or May. We're in the process of writing it up now. - Awesome. Well, we would love to have you back when you- - Love to come back. - validated the information and validated the research, and talk more about what you've discovered in the process? So, I hope- - Thank you, I really - that you come back. - appreciate the interest. - Awesome. - Yes. Yeah - Davyda Hammond, thank you so much for spending time. Is there anything I haven't asked you, that you wanna make sure that you cover? - No. I just wanna, I know I'm standing here, sitting here in this podcast, representing ORAU, but there are a lot of people that have championed this work and worked this part of this project. So I just wanna thank the whole team at ORAU, for just rallying behind this work, answering questions, giving advice. It's definitely been a team effort, so thank you to all my colleagues. - Awesome. Davyda Hammond, thank you so much, for spending some time with us today. I really appreciate it. - Thank you. - Have a great day. - You too. Bye. - Thank you for listening to Further Together, the ORAU podcast. To learn more about any of the topics discussed by our experts. Visit www.orau.org. You can also find us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn @ORAU, and on Instagram @ORAUTOGETHER. If you like Further Together, the ORAU podcast, we would appreciate you giving us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Your reviews will help more people find the podcast.