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Welcome to the Diablo Analytical Institute website. DAI's aim is to undertake two crucial environmental health activities – provide epidemiologic services to organizations and conduct epidemiologic investigations on the adverse impacts of elevated air pollution concentration levels and related environmental (ecological) hazards on the health of organizations.

Environmental Health Services for Organizations

Organizations are formed for many reasons. Some organizations manufacture products while other organizations provide services. For example, an automobile company is an organization that makes automobiles, while a school system is a service organization that provides academic instruction to students.

Members of organizations can be differentiated on assigned roles. Most organizations include employees who conduct the work and managers who oversee the workforce. In addition, service organizations are responsible for the health of persons who benefit from their service.

A person's role in an organization can be a health indicator. The assigned role represents the expected and ongoing contribution that the organization has established for persons within a work stratum.

Organizational longevity is indicative of a person's continued contribution to the organization based on the quantity and quality of work output. Workers in the same role are expected to complete similar work assignments in the same or in a similar ecological location.

The ecological makeup of the work environment may secondarily contribute to maintaining the employees in good health or may result in the future development of less than optimal health.

The organizational longevity paradox can occur under unique circumstances: The most valued employees – those persons who are most productive and do the best work, could become ill because of long-term exposure to low-level environmental hazards in the assigned ecological workspace. Likewise, students can become ill through exposure to ecological hazards.

There are two general sources of environmental hazards. The primary hazard source is air pollution, and the secondary hazard source that can occur in the workspace is the ecological hazard. Synergism between these two environmental hazards can increase the combined environmental hazard concentration level in exposed persons.

How long it takes for exposed persons to show adverse health outcomes can vary based on outdoor and indoor air pollution concentration levels, presence of secondary ecological hazards, and other personal health issues, also referred to as risk factors:

• Physical exertion can increase how much of the polluted air is inhaled.

• Overweight and obese persons show an accelerated reaction to air pollution.

• Higher ambient temperature can contribute to the accelerated occurrence of an adverse health outcome.

Frequent use of asthma recue medication, recurring asthma attacks, excessive number of sick days, numerous employee complaints about not feeling well in assigned workspaces, and deteriorating work performance can be, under some circumstances, an early indication of the presence of environmental hazards in the work setting – air pollution and ecological hazards.

DAI services help organizations determine if these or other symptoms of less than optimal health reported by organizational members or service recipients (customers) are a result of exposure to environmental hazards.

Environmental Health Regulations

Implemented environmental legislation establishes minimum environmental hazard concentration level standards that are needed to maintain persons in good health. Federal, state, and local environmental and health codes identify what environmental hazard concentration levels are known to contribute to illnesses and deaths.

But currently enacted and enforced environmental and health codes may not include all environmental hazard risks and their associated poor health outcomes. For example, long-term exposure to low-level environmental hazard concentrations may not be included in currently implemented and enforced environmental and health codes because their adverse health effects have not been unequivocally confirmed in currently completed and available scientific, clinical, and epidemiologic studies.

For employees who work for organizations, significant advantages of organizational tenure are job security, health insurance, sick leave, annual leave, and colleagueship. Disadvantages of being a long-term employee in an organization could include risk factors associated with poor health. One personal risk factor could be the gradual weight gain that is first expressed as overweight and later manifested as obesity – a recognized chronic disease.

Being obese is accompanied by other non-desirable health risk factors that include late onset (Type 2) diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. These metabolic disorders can occur among some tenured workforce persons for different reasons such as on-the-job boredom, increased caloric intake, and physical inactivity. Organizational members with these chronic metabolic diseases can also develop comorbidities, which include high blood pressure, hypertension, and respiratory-cardiovascular-cerebrovascular chronic diseases.

Living and working with a chronic disease can be a personal work challenge for the employee and the organization. As stated previously, workers with multiple chronic illnesses may have more sick days, higher health insurance costs, and demonstrate less than optimal work performance.

In addition to worrying about the future economic well-being of employees, managers have to consider the health status of their employees and customers. For example, school systems have had to address the adverse consequences of air pollution exposure on childhood asthma, indoor asbestos exposure on compromised lung functioning, and the adverse consequences of lead exposure on diminished intellectual and academic performance.

Another environmental hazard threat to organizations is members' (and customers’) exposure to ambient air pollution and ecological hazards. The positive association between exposure to elevated concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) and higher respiratory-cardiovascular-cerebrovascular chronic diseases becomes stronger (worse) if there are ecological hazards in the workplace.

The adverse effects of exposure to higher concentrations of air pollution should be more severe among organizational members who also have two chronic diseases, such as asthma and obesity, or asthma and the metabolic syndrome, compared to workers who only have asthma or other workers who are chronic disease free.

Climate change is an additional issue that can strengthen the association (make it worse) between environmental hazard exposure and adverse health outcome. Two unequivocal consequences of climate change are increased ambient temperature and more frequently occurring temperature extremes. Both of these climate change events are expected to increase over the next three (or more) decades.

Higher ambient temperatures should increase ambient levels of PM_2.5 and ozone (O₃). Continued exposure to higher temperature is a physiologic stressor that will compromise the body's ambient heat compensatory mechanisms.

Temperature variability, defined as a more considerable difference between average annual temperature and daily temperature, will also challenge the body's capability to adjust to a higher daily temperature.

The anticipated consequences of higher annual ambient temperatures and more temperature extreme days will be expressed as increased respiratory-cardiovascular-cerebrovascular chronic disease illnesses and deaths. These undesirable adverse health outcomes will make it harder for organizations to assure the ecological safety of all employees and customers (service recipients). Another unwanted outcome will be the long-term retention of a healthy and productive workforce. Finally, organizations’ health insurance and other labor costs increase when environmental hazards adversely impact the overall health of employees and customers.