Illinois Environmental Protection Agency

Lithium-ion battery fires present increasing safety engineering challenges, with U.S. incident rates rising 86% between 2020 and 2023, particularly in micromobility devices and urban environments. We analyzed 148 lithium-ion battery fire incidents documented through the Massachusetts State Fire Marshal’s specialized checklist program, employing logistic regression for charging-related risks, spatial clustering for geographic patterns, and time-series analysis for temporal trends. Consumer electronics showed significantly lower odds of charging-related fires (OR = 0.125–0.148, p < 0.05), while micromobility devices had the highest injury rate (IRR = 2.98, 95% CI: 0.837–10.615). Charging was involved in 40.5% of cases, and online purchases were associated with greater risk (OR = 1.87, 95% CI: 1.23–2.84, p = 0.003). Significant urban clustering was observed (Moran’s I = 0.28, p = 0.003) with three metropolitan hotspots. Device-specific risk profiles demonstrate the effectiveness of existing consumer electronics safety standards and highlight critical intervention points for emerging high-risk devices, particularly in dense urban areas where targeted protection strategies are most needed.

HighlightsPublic health relevance—How does this work relate to a public health issue?This work reviews articles related to landfills in rural Alaska communities and may guide future research related to gaps identified in this review.Unlined landfills lacking leachate collection systems may impact public health.Public health significance—Why is this work of significance to public health?This work identifies several potential disease transmission and chemical exposure pathways associated with such landfills, which are primarily found in rural and tribal communities already facing significant health disparities.If harvested, birds, fish, other animals and plants living, growing, or feeding by open surface area landfills could present public health implications for Indigenous and other hunting populations via ingestion or contact with waste pathogens or chemicals.Public health implications—What are the key implications or messages for practitioners, policy makers and/or researchers in public health?This review paper elucidates the need to continue to assess landfill contaminant transport, exposure pathways and risks and the unique challenges of solid waste management in rural Alaska and other Arctic environments.Future research directions regarding the risk to subsistence resources and the associated health implications for Alaska Native and other Arctic subsistence-based cultures should prioritize community-based, co-produced research that integrates Indigenous Knowledge with Western science. This approach is crucial for addressing the existing health disparities and unique environmental exposures faced by these communities.Landfill contaminants pose significant risks to environmental and human health, particularly in rural Alaska. These communities are predominantly Alaska Native and face unique challenges in solid waste management due to geography, climate, and limited infrastructure. This scoping review assessed published research on the impacts of landfill contaminants in the Arctic (Aim 1) and Alaska specifically (Aim 2). Seventy-one studies met the inclusion criteria, all of which were used to develop a conceptual model of contaminant transport pathways. Thirty-nine studies included Alaska-specific research: thirty-three focused on environmental impacts, and six addressed human health (e.g., birth outcomes, cancer). Key topics included waste burning, heat generation, carbon release, leachate characterization, and water or sediment contamination. Evidence specific to Alaska suggested landfill leachate may contaminate surface water and groundwater, and that microbes can migrate beyond the landfill site boundaries in communities using honeybuckets (plastic bag-lined buckets that collect human waste). Landfill contaminants also impacted wildlife through consumption of garbage, which may have human health implications for subsistence-based communities. Major research gaps remain in understanding individual-level exposures, the effects of emerging contaminants, and the mechanisms of contaminant transport pathways. Further research designed for causal inference is needed to support improvements to public and environmental health.

Urban aesthetics encompasses the visual and spatial quality of a city, significantly affecting residents' well-being and economic growth. Theories of urban design emphasise the importance of spatial organisation, green spaces, and architectural coherence in fostering aesthetically appealing cities. Nigeria’s economic diversification hinges on transforming its urban centres into aesthetically vibrant, sustainable hubs, moving beyond reliance on crude oil. Geospatial technology has been shown to be affordable and efficient in understanding the varying forms of cities, their continuous expansion, and the processes responsible for their growth pattern. Cities like Lagos, once celebrated for their cultural and architectural heritage, now grapple with aesthetic decline driven by rapid urbanisation, inadequate planning, environmental degradation, and socio-economic disparities. This study critically examines the challenges undermining urban environmental quality in Nigeria, focusing on hotspot cities like Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja, Kano, among others, as a case study, and identifies gaps in knowledge, infrastructure, and institutional support that exacerbate these issues. Key obstacles include limited geospatial data, high costs of GeoAI adoption, technical expertise deficits, and socio-cultural resistance to technology-driven urban interventions. Employing a multidisciplinary approach, such as a systematic literature review, the study proposes novel contributions to innovative solutions, integrating sustainable urban planning, inclusive governance, public participation, and advanced geospatial technologies to restore and enhance urban beauty. The systematic literature review involves an extensive examination of 80 published academic sources, policy documents, and case studies relevant to urban aesthetics, GeoAI, governance, and sustainable city planning. The study highlights the role of GeoAI in enabling precise urban design, green space optimisation, and infrastructure monitoring, drawing on best practices from cities like Singapore and Kigali that have successfully revitalised their urban aesthetics. Advanced GeoAI technologies— encompassing satellite imagery, predictive analytics, and real-time urban monitoring—offer transformative potential to redeem the environmental aesthetics of Nigerian cities, fostering tourism, employment, and foreign exchange. However, incomplete data remains a critical barrier, undermining the reliability of spatial predictive models and their applications in urban planning and social sensing. Challenges such as missing features, sparse observations, temporal snapshot limitations, and mismatched spatial scales hinder GeoAI’s ability to capture the complex interplay of human–environment interactions in cities like Lagos. This study argues that successful implementation in Nigeria demands robust policy frameworks, capacity building, and equitable technology access to bridge systemic inequalities. Through addressing these challenges, this study provides a new roadmap for policymakers, city planners, and stakeholders to leverage GeoAI for urban renewal, ensuring Nigerian cities reclaim their aesthetic allure while fostering economic and environmental resilience. This study's recommendations underscore that structuring Nigeria’s urban environmental aesthetics requires not only technological innovation but also a commitment to social equity and community-driven urban transformation.

Biotic interactions and environmental changes due to increasing water temperatures, nutrient enrichment, and other factors can affect species diversity, abundance, and distribution. Lake Superior is the deepest and one of the most oligotrophic lakes in the Laurentian Great Lakes system. While considered the least affected by cultural eutrophication, Lake Superior is among the world’s fastest-warming freshwater bodies, having already exhibited resulting physical and ecological changes over the past three decades. We used data from current and historical surveys to identify spatial patterns and provide an assessment of the status and temporal trends of the Lake Superior benthic community over the last 50 years. Our study indicated that the dominance structure of the community remained quite stable, with the highest proportion of community comprised by the deepwater amphipod Diporeia hoyi, followed by Oligochaeta, Sphaeriidae, and Chironomidae. Benthic community structure differed spatially, with higher species diversity found in the shallow zone (≤30 m), the highest Diporeia densities at intermediate depth zones (30–50 and 50–90 m), and the lowest densities of all taxa in the deepest zone (>90 m). Lakewide benthos densities increased in the 1990s–2000s, most likely due to reduced fish predation, but are now stabilized. Although current benthos densities are still higher than in the 1970s, nearshore surveys indicated declines in Diporeia and other major taxa in the last decade. These changes may indicate a return to levels observed in the 1970s or reflect a long-term trend of decline in populations, reinforcing the importance of frequent monitoring that could foretell lakewide changes.

Environmental health concerns over per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have prompted public health laboratories to pursue monitoring studies determining PFAS occurrences. Select laboratories have begun implementing non-targeted analysis (NTA) methods to address the disparity between the few (< 100) PFAS typically measured using targeted analyses and the thousands of known PFAS. While NTA can provide a more comprehensive understanding of PFAS occurrence, significant barriers prevent its widespread adoption in public health laboratories. Notable barriers include a lack of harmonized guidance, standardized methods, and workflows that enable robust NTA application. EPA's Office of Research and Development has been working to overcome these barriers as part of technical collaborations with state environmental and public health laboratories. As a product of these efforts, ORD has developed the ENTAiLS Toolkit, a publicly available compilation of best practices and an open-source data processing workflow for PFAS NTA studies. The ENTAiLS Toolkit offers NTA practitioners comprehensive guidance and integrated tools that can aid the identification and characterization of PFAS in drinking water resources.

The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) Task Group 120 (TG120) is developing ICRP recommendations for radiological protection for a wide range of radiation accidents and malicious events, complementing those given in ICRP Publication 146 (2020) for large nuclear accidents. The scope includes accidents involving criticalities, operating faults, and fires and explosions in nuclear facilities, inadvertent damage to sealed radiation sources, as well as malicious events, such as sabotage of nuclear facilities or materials, use of radiological dispersal devices, the contamination of food and drinking water supplies, and the deployment of nuclear weapons. A template has been designed to collate relevant information on a wide range of case studies and hypothetical malicious scenarios to ensure that the recommendations developed are broadly applicable and comprehensive. For all scenarios, a graded approach to protection is being taken, accepting that specific guidance may be required for some distinctive aspects, for example, protection during times of armed conflict. This paper provides an overview of the scenarios and scope of the work of TG120, including some of the radiological and non-radiological impacts of radiation emergencies, along the response and recovery timeline.

BackgroundLead is a persistent, ubiquitous pollutant whose historical sources have been largely addressed through regulation and voluntary actions. The United States (U.S.) has achieved significant decreases in children’s blood lead levels (BLL) over the past 40 years; however, there is no known safe level of Pb exposure. Some communities continue to be disproportionately impacted by exposure to Pb, including Black children and families living in older homes.ObjectiveTo identify Ohio (OH) census tracts with children exposed to Pb and evaluate potential exposure determinants.MethodsWe obtained individual children’s blood Pb data from 2005–2018 in OH. The percent of children with elevated BLL (EBLL) was calculated for OH census tracts using three blood Pb reference values (3.5, 5, and 10 µg/dL). Getis-Ord Gi* geospatial hotspot or top 20th percentile methodologies were then applied to identify “hotspots.” Findings across multiple time periods and blood Pb reference values were evaluated and compared with existing Pb exposure indices and models.ResultsConsistency was observed across different blood Pb reference values, with the main hotspots identified at 3.5 µg/dL, also identified at 5 and 10 µg/dL. Substantial gains in public health were demonstrated, with the biggest decreases in the number of census tracts with EBLL observed between 2008–2010 and 2011–2013. Across OH, 355 census tracts (of 2850) were identified as hotspots across 17 locations, with the majority in the most populated cites. Generally, old housing and sociodemographic factors were indicators of these EBLL hotspots. A smaller number of hotspots were not associated with these exposure determinants. Variables of race, income, and education level were all strong predictors of hotspots.Impact statementThe Getis-Ord Gi* geospatial hotspot analysis can inform local investigations into potential Pb exposures for children living in OH. The successful application of a generalizable childhood blood Pb methodology at the census tract scale provides results that are more readily actionable. The moderate agreement of the measured blood Pb results with public Pb indices provide confidence that these indices can be used in the absence of available blood Pb surveillance data. While not a replacement for universal blood Pb testing, a consistent approach can be applied to identify areas where Pb exposure may be problematic.

Nutrient loss from agricultural practices in the Midwest contributes to degradation in ecosystem structure and function. Subsurface drainage systems in tilled corn-soybean rotations that rely on fertilization results in up to 50% of fall fertilizer being lost to the environment. Solutions are needed to reduce nutrient pollution from Midwestern agriculture. Cover crops are a best management practice that shows potential to reduce nutrient loss from Illinois farms. However, due to economic concerns, cover crop usage in Illinois is low (6%). A novel winter oilseed, pennycress, has the potential to act both as a cover crop and a cash crop, benefitting both the environment and producers. The goal of this thesis is to explore the ability of pennycress to provide beneficial ecosystem services to agroecosystems of the Midwest. We conducted 4 studies on soil nutrients, porewater nutrients, and organic matter decomposition at the Illinois State University and Western Illinois University farms to determine the effectiveness of pennycress as a cool season nutrient sink. At the study sites plots of pennycress and fertilized pennycress were compared to a fallow reference treatment. We observed 61% reductions in soil nitrate-nitrogen, the primary pollutant of concern, and up to 69% reductions in soil porewater nitrate-nitrogen, relative to the fallow reference. Furthermore, we did not find differences in nutrient concentrations between fertilized and unfertilized pennycress. Pennycress effectively sequestered nitrate-nitrogen and retained this nitrate-nitrogen for long periods of time. Thus, we conclude pennycress is an effective tool to reduce nitrate-nitrogen pollution from tile-drained agricultural fields.