SummaryBackgroundAlcohol use is a leading risk factor for death and disability, but its overall association with health remains complex given the possible protective effects of moderate alcohol consumption on some conditions. With our comprehensive approach to health accounting within the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study 2016, we generated improved estimates of alcohol use and alcohol-attributable deaths and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) for 195 locations from 1990 to 2016, for both sexes and for 5-year age groups between the ages of 15 years and 95 years and older.MethodsUsing 694 data sources of individual and population-level alcohol consumption, along with 592 prospective and retrospective studies on the risk of alcohol use, we produced estimates of the prevalence of current drinking, abstention, the distribution of alcohol consumption among current drinkers in standard drinks daily (defined as 10 g of pure ethyl alcohol), and alcohol-attributable deaths and DALYs. We made several methodological improvements compared with previous estimates: first, we adjusted alcohol sales estimates to take into account tourist and unrecorded consumption; second, we did a new meta-analysis of relative risks for 23 health outcomes associated with alcohol use; and third, we developed a new method to quantify the level of alcohol consumption that minimises the overall risk to individual health.FindingsGlobally, alcohol use was the seventh leading risk factor for both deaths and DALYs in 2016, accounting for 2·2% (95% uncertainty interval [UI] 1·5–3·0) of age-standardised female deaths and 6·8% (5·8–8·0) of age-standardised male deaths. Among the population aged 15–49 years, alcohol use was the leading risk factor globally in 2016, with 3·8% (95% UI 3·2–4·3) of female deaths and 12·2% (10·8–13·6) of male deaths attributable to alcohol use. For the population aged 15–49 years, female attributable DALYs were 2·3% (95% UI 2·0–2·6) and male attributable DALYs were 8·9% (7·8–9·9). The three leading causes of attributable deaths in this age group were tuberculosis (1·4% [95% UI 1·0–1·7] of total deaths), road injuries (1·2% [0·7–1·9]), and self-harm (1·1% [0·6–1·5]). For populations aged 50 years and older, cancers accounted for a large proportion of total alcohol-attributable deaths in 2016, constituting 27·1% (95% UI 21·2–33·3) of total alcohol-attributable female deaths and 18·9% (15·3–22·6) of male deaths. The level of alcohol consumption that minimised harm across health outcomes was zero (95% UI 0·0–0·8) standard drinks per week.InterpretationAlcohol use is a leading risk factor for global disease burden and causes substantial health loss. We found that the risk of all-cause mortality, and of cancers specifically, rises with increasing levels of consumption, and the level of consumption that minimises health loss is zero. These results suggest that alcohol control policies might need to be revised worldwide, refocusing on efforts to lower overall population-level consumption.FundingBill & Meli...

No abstract

Abstract:This study aims to determine the optimal approach for evaluating thermal comfort in an office that uses natural ventilation as the main conditioning strategy; the office is located in Quito-Ecuador. The performance of the adaptive model included in CEN Standard EN15251 and the traditional PMV model are compared with reports of thermal environment satisfaction surveys presented simultaneously to all occupants of the office to determine which of the two comfort models is most suitable to evaluate the thermal environment. The results indicate that office occupants have developed some degree of adaptation to the climatic conditions of the city where the office is located (which only demands heating operation), and tend to accept and even prefer lower operative temperatures than those considered optimum by applying the PMV model. This is an indication that occupants of naturally conditioned buildings are usually able to match their comfort temperature to their normal environment. Therefore, the application of the adaptive model included in CEN Standard EN15251 seems like the optimal approach for evaluating thermal comfort in naturally conditioned buildings, because it takes into consideration the adaptive principle that indicates that if a change occurs such as to produce discomfort, people tend to react in ways which restore their comfort.

The external environment directly influences human health. However, what happens inside? This work deals with the effect that the interior thermal variables have on the propagation of respiratory diseases and focused on the relation of the temperature and relative humidity inside social housing in the 1040 parishes of Ecuador and the transmission of influenza. On the one hand, historical weather-related variables were used to simulate and estimate the interior conditions, and thresholds on temperature and humidity were determined. On the other hand, the health-related variable was determined by analyzing the statistics corresponding to the influenza and viral pneumonia in 2009 since that year was critical for these diseases; the data were divided by month for each parish. Finally, the correlation of these variables determines the relative importance of the interior conditions on the respiratory health of its inhabitants. The preliminary results indicate that the places with the lowest temperatures and relative humidity could favor the virus transmission. Also, the analysis indicated that respiratory diseases increase in August and October. In this way, it is clear that social housing projects in Ecuador require a study which guarantees not only energy efficiency and sustainability related issues but also the well-being of their inhabitants.

Las normas de energía en edificaciones (NEE) son políticas importantes de reducción de energía, emisiones y costos. A su vez, contribuyen a que las edificaciones existentes y nuevas se beneficien de las medidas y estrategias actuales de eficiencia. Simular, cuantificar y comparar el impacto de la implementación de la Norma Ecuatoriana de la Construcción (NEC), principalmente el capítulo de eficiencia energética en edificaciones residenciales (NEC-HS-EE) en viviendas tipo en términos de consumo de energía y su aporte a la reducción de GEI, como estrategia de mitigación al cambio climático. Se simuló con el programa DesignBuilder V.4.07 y analizó el comportamiento térmico y energético de dos viviendas tipo ubicados en la ciudad de Guayaquil, provincia del Guayas la cual reporta un consumo de energía promedio de 1672.48kWh/hab por año. Se realizó un análisis comparativo de sin/con la implementación de la NEC-HS-EE en el siguiente orden, 1) distribución de las temperaturas ambiente y operativa (interior de la vivienda), 2) balance de energía como resultado del intercambio de energía producto de la transferencia de calor en los diferentes elementos constructivos de la vivienda, 3) consumo de  energía como producto del equipamiento y la actividad normal de los habitantes y los diferentes requerimientos energéticos de los equipos de acondicionamiento de aire y 4) emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI) expresadas en kgCO2eq/m2/año. Los resultados mostraron que con la aplicación de la NEC-HS-EE se contribuyó a una reducción de emisiones de GEI, así como una disminución de la temperatura operativa en ambas viviendas. En términos reales, la aplicación de la NEC-HS-EE representó una reducción total de 1046kWh/m2 equivalentes a 934.4 kgCO2-eq por año en la “Vivienda tipo con acabados medios”, y de 0.93 kWh/m2 equivalentes a 18.42 kgCO2-eq por año en la vivienda “Juntos por ti”. Esta investigación establece una evaluación comparativa, sobre los beneficios derivados de las normas de energía en edificaciones y contribuyen al desarrollo de conceptos e instrumentos de etiquetado en edificaciones. Finalmente, como estrategia de mitigación al cambio climático, se propone la necesidad del desarrollo de estrategias complementarias de reducción de emisiones GEI que incluyan esquemas de etiquetado para los usuarios residenciales, así como ampliar la tipología de edificaciones sujetas a la NEC-HS-EE más allá del uso residencial.