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In this article, we provide an overview of the ways in which disaster managers in eight European countries use social media to mitigate people's vulnerability to hazards. Our document analysis and 95 expert interviews in Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, Hungary, Finland, Norway, and Estonia revealed six distinct institutional social media practices that may reduce disaster vulnerability: sharing educational guidelines, informing and warning the public, identifying citizens' concerns, identifying missing persons, sharing guidelines during disaster, and organizing volunteers. We discuss how these practices could affect people's ability to access, understand, and react adequately to information about risks and hazards. Our findings can be used to improve guidelines for official crisis communication on social media and demonstrate the value of using social media in disaster risk reduction.

While social vulnerability in the face of disasters has received increasing academic attention, relatively little is known about the extent to which that knowledge is reflected in practice by institutions involved in disaster management. This study charts the practitioners’ approaches to disaster vulnerability in eight European countries: Belgium; Estonia; Finland; Germany; Hungary; Italy; Norway; and Sweden. It draws on a comparative document analysis and 95 interviews with disaster managers and reveals significant differences across countries in terms of the ontology of vulnerability, its sources, reduction strategies, and the allocation of related duties. To advance the debate and provide conceptual clarity, we put forward a heuristic model to facilitate different understandings of vulnerability along the dimensions of human agency and technological structures as well as social support through private relations and state actors. This could guide risk analysis of and planning for major hazards and could be adapted further to particular types of disasters.

Submicroscopic nanoparticles (NPs) in air have received much attention due to their possible effects on health and wellbeing. Adverse health impacts of air pollution may not only be associated with level of exposure, but also mediated by the perception of the pollution and by beliefs of the exposure being hazardous. The aim of this study was to test a model that describes interrelations between NP pollution, perceived air quality, health risk perception, stress, and sick building syndrome. In the NanoOffice study, the level of NPs was measured and a survey on health risk perception was conducted among 260 employees in twelve office buildings in northern Sweden. Path analyses were performed to test the validity of the model. The data refute the model proposing that the NP exposure level significantly influences stress, chronic diseases, or SBS symptoms. Instead, the perceived exposure influences the perceived risk of NP, and the effect of perceived exposure on SBS and chronic disease is mediated by stress. There was little concern about nanoparticles, despite relatively high levels in some facilities. Perceived pollution and health risk perception may explain a large part of the environmentally induced symptoms and diseases, particularly in relatively low levels of pollution. The research results raise important questions on the physiologically or psychologically mediated health effects of air pollution., BuildERS

Despite the increasing number of studies on industrially contaminated sites (ICS) and their health effects, there are very few studies on perinatal health outcomes in ICSs. In the present study, we examined the perinatal health inequalities by comparing adverse birth outcomes (ABOs) in the oil shale industry region of Ida-Viru County in Estonia with national-level figures and investigated the effects of maternal environmental and sociodemographic factors. Based on the 208,313 birth records from 2004–2018, Ida-Viru ICS has a birth weight 124.5 g lower than the average of 3544 g in Estonia. A higher prevalence of preterm birth (4.3%) and low birth weight (4.8%) in Ida-Viru ICS is found compared to 3.3% on both indicators at the national level. Multiple logistic regression analysis shows the statistically significant association of ABOs with fine particle (PM2.5) air pollution, mother’s ethnicity, and education throughout Estonia. However, in Ida-Viru ICS, the ABOs odds are remarkably higher in these characteristics except for the mother’s ethnicity. Furthermore, the ABOs are associated with the residential proximity to ICS. Thus, the Ida-Viru ICS has unequally higher odds of adverse perinatal health across the environmental and sociodemographic factors. In addition to reducing the air pollutants, policy actions on social disparities are vital to address the country’s unjustly higher perinatal health inequalities, especially in the Ida-Viru ICS.

Objectives: To review the evidence of associations between adverse birth outcomes (ABO) and industrial air pollution. Methods: Searches were conducted in PubMed, and Scopus databases, and additional articles were found from snowball search techniques. The included studies feature a study population of mothers with live-born babies exposed to industrial air pollutants, and they examine the effects of industrial pollutants on adverse birth outcomes—namely, low birth weight, term low birth weight, preterm birth, and small for gestational age. Results: Altogether, 45 studies were included in this review. Exposure to PM2.5, PAHs, benzene, cadmium, and mixtures of industrial air pollutants and living near an industrial area affect birth outcomes. Conclusion: This study concludes that industrial air pollution is an important risk factor for ABO, especially low birth weight and preterm birth. The strongest evidence is associations between ABO and air pollution from power plants and petrochemical industries. Understanding of specific chemicals that are critical to birth outcomes is still vague. However, the evidence is strongest for more specific air pollutants from the industry, such as PAH, benzene, BTEX, and cadmium.

The health effects of particulate matter, increasing emissions from transportation and requisites for making use of biofuels brings up the need to understand how individuals interpret air-pollution-related risks from wood burning and traffic. We aim to clarify the extent to which perceived risks from road-traffic and wood-smoke can be explained by the individual psychological, social status-related and socio-institutional factors in the case of two Northern European countries, Finland and Estonia. This approach elucidates which of the closely intertwined factors shape the perception of risks from air pollution in different socio-institutional contexts and for different air pollution sources. The study uses data from cross-sectional population surveys conducted among 1112 Finnish and 1000 Estonian residents about environmental health risk perception and coping. Binary logistic regression analysis demonstrated that in both countries’ cases, the perceived personal and general risk from traffic exhaust and wood-smoke can be explained by the perception of exposure to pollution and, also, by the level of knowledge of, the worry about and the possible symptoms from environmental health factors. The perceived vulnerability due to poor health further sensitises individuals towards risks from air pollution. Higher trust towards state institutions in guaranteeing a healthy living environment and greater perceived openness about the risks may attenuate the feelings of vulnerability to air pollution risks in Finland compared to Estonia. The ingrained appeal for wood burning may explain the higher acceptance of exhausts from wood-burning compared to traffic. This may lead to scant support for measures to reduce emissions from wood combustion.