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Caño Martín Peña Community Citizen monitoring of indoor fungal and bacterial microbiome levels to assess reductions in asthma triggers before and after remediation of flooding events including those occurring after natural disasters
Citation:
Betancourt, D., T. Dean, AND E. Huertas. Caño Martín Peña Community Citizen monitoring of indoor fungal and bacterial microbiome levels to assess reductions in asthma triggers before and after remediation of flooding events including those occurring after natural disasters. San Juan Bay Estuary Project virtual meeting, NA, PR, May 19, 2022.
Impact/Purpose:
It has been demonstrated that citizen science projects empower communities and promote collaborative work together towards developing and implementing solutions to address community issues. The expected outcomes include: (1) hands-on experience in performing sampling and remediating their residences after a flood event and/or disaster-related event; and, (2) empowerment of individuals on conducting environmental sampling and utilizing those results to make informed decisions about the health of their families. The University’s & local agencies’ anticipated outcomes will include: (1) become better positioned to make informed sustainability-policy decisions and capital cost investments; (2) better equipped to train other public entities and community members to utilize the appropriate mitigation techniques; and (3) loaning testing and mitigation equipment to residents in the community for future flooding or clean-up events respectively. Likewise, this study aims to address the following clean-up questions when applied to highly humid environments with the predominant building material being concrete: (1) Are EPA guidelines for mold clean-up after flood events adequately relay information that will help improve indoor air quality?; and (2) Do these guidelines need to be modified in tropical marine environments?
Description:
Project Abstract: Problem: The Puerto Rico’s Caño Martin Peña (CMP), made of eight environmental-justice (EJ) communities, is experiencing detrimental environmental conditions due to the non-existence or inadequate sanitary sewer and storm sewer systems and the environmental degradation of the channel, which conditions exacerbated after the passing of hurricanes Irma and María in September 2017, including early this year 900+ earthquakes. This has resulted in increased flooding and exposures to indoor mold and bacterial levels. The high incidence of respiratory illnesses may be associated with these mold exposures and the structural deterioration of homes and other structures during flood events. This citizen science monitoring project will foster the community knowledge and understanding on low-cost, effective and non-hazardous protocols for successfully remediating their homes after flooding events. Actions: The proposed project aims to empower citizens from Caño Martin Peña EJ community by: training individuals in conducting citizen science monitoring of their homes before and after a flooding event; educating citizens about building-science monitoring technologies such as hygrometers and moisture meters to assess indoor relative humidity (RH) levels and moisture content in building materials; reducing indoor microbial populations after a flood event by the application of low cost-cleaning products; and, by providing recommendations to improve the building structural elements to be issued by the UPR-Mayagüez’s Coastal Resilience Center.