Health Promotion at the Ballpark.

The arrival of a new summer collegiate baseball league franchise to a small central New York city was seen as an opportunity for health promotion. The initiative was set up to explore two overarching questions: (1) Are summer collegiate baseball events acceptable to local public health organizations as viable places for health promotion activities addressing local health issues? (2) Are summer collegiate baseball organizations amenable to health promotion activities built in to their fan and/or player experiences? Planning and implementation were guided by precede-proceed, social cognitive theory, social marketing, and diffusion of innovations constructs. Environmental changes were implemented to support healthy eating and nontobacco use by players and fans; four health awareness nights were implemented at home games corresponding to local public health priorities and included public service announcements, between inning quizzes, information dissemination at concession and team market locations, and special guests. Sales and fan feedback support mostly healthy concession offerings and a tobacco-free ballpark; postseason evaluations from team staff and public health partners support continuing the trials of this sports event as a venue for health promotion.

Impact on crops, plants and soils of metal trace elements transfer and flux, after spreading of fertilizers and biosolids.

In France, the yearly production of sludge from wastewater treatment plants is 900,000 metric tons dry matter and 60% of this is reused for land application. Today, the sustainability of this pathway is open to question. Among the different arguments cited are the levels of metal trace elements and the risks of accumulation in soils. With the ultimate aim of agronomic sludge recycling, the transfer of metal trace elements has been studied using vegetation containers planted with rye-grass under controlled conditions of temperature and humidity. Samples of a domestic sludge, an industrial sludge and a fertilizer have been mixed with the soil. By monitoring the growth of the rye-grass, we have been able to observe that the addition of sludge increases production of plant matter. It appears that the roots absorb higher quantities of metal trace elements and form a barrier to their transfer to the above ground parts of the rye-grass. For the group of metal trace elements studied, no significant differences have been observed between the rye-grass grown on soil alone and that on soils amended with fertilizer or urban sludge. For the majority of the vegetation containers studied, there has been no significant modification in the soil metal distribution over time, as a result of the addition of urban sludge, and no significant difference between fertilizers and sludges.