Exposure to smoke from landscape fires

The megafires of the summer of 2019-20 are a foretaste of the future. Landscape fires will become more common and severe with climate change in Australia. In 2014 an out of control bushfire ignited the Hazelwood open cut brown coal mine, which burned for 6 weeks. The nearby town of Morwell and the rest of the Latrobe Valley were covered in smoke and ash. The Hazelwood Health Study (HHS) was established to investigate potential long-term health effects of prolonged exposure to this smoke. The HHS has developed detailed individual measures of cumulative and peak exposure to fine particulate matter <2.5µm (PM2.5). This has combined a CSIRO model predicting PM2.5 concentrations within the Latrobe Valley for each day and detailed time location diaries completed by participants of the Adult Survey. However such detailed information is not available for most residents of Morwell. Thus we now wish to explore simpler exposure metric based upon how many of the first 20 days and nights of the Hazelwood mine fire were spent in Morwell. There will also be an opportunity to analyse data from more recent EPA ground level measurements including the period of the megafires. These quantitative measures will be triangulated with media reports of the mine fire and bushfires affecting Gippsland since 2014. This project would suit a student who is comfortable working with people and has an interest in the area of environmental health. He/she would like to develop skills in both quantitative and qualitative data analysis and interpretation. The student will be part of the HHS research team, which includes physicians, epidemiologists, psychologists, statisticians and social scientists. In addition to writing a thesis, there will be an opportunity to write a paper for publication. For further information on the HHS in which this project sits, see https://hazelwoodhealthstudy.org.au/