The Sumida river estuary of Tokyo bay is often affected by fecal contamination from combined sewer overflows (CSOs). This study monitored the surface water quality from the upstream of the Sumida ...river to the estuary in October 2017, June 2018, and July 2018 after three long-duration rainfall events. Several types of sewage markers, including fecal bacteria and two types of bacteriophages as microbial markers, and five pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) as chemical markers were used to evaluate fecal contamination. CSO discharge was estimated separately from pumping stations and overflow chambers. The dominant contribution from overflow chambers was estimated to be as high as 86 – 91% of total discharge volume indicating their significance in controlling CSO pollution. High concentrations of sewage marker were observed in a wide area due to CSO discharge of more than 30 h in all 3 events.
Escherichia coli
was found to be as high as 4.00 – 4.57 log
10
(CFU/100 mL). Meanwhile, caffeine showed the highest concentration of 2105 ng/L among PPCPs. It was found to be a useful indicator of recent contamination that captured a unique spatial distribution tendency. On the other hand, crotamiton, a conservative PPCP, was found to be highly diluted and might not be appropriate for tracking pollutants under heavy rainfall events. The effect of CSO discharge pattern and tidal change on the distribution of sewage markers, including dispersion degree and pollutants travel time, was described. CSO pollutants were found to accumulate in the river mouth areas during high tide before being discharged into the estuary.
Combined sewer overflows (CSOs) are known contributors of human fecal pollution in urban waterways. Exposure to these waterways occurs during recreational activities, including swimming, wading, and ...fishing. This study used quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA) to estimate the risk of acute gastrointestinal illness (AGI) due to recreation during CSO-impacted (< 24 h after a CSO) and non-impacted (> 24 h after a CSO) conditions. Water samples (n = 69) were collected from two creeks and one river in Philadelphia from June–August 2017–2019. HF183 concentrations were measured to estimate concentrations of five reference pathogens: Cryptosporidium, Giardia, norovirus, E. coli O157:H7, and Salmonella. Observational data on the types and frequency of recreational exposures were also collected. Results found that recreating < 24 h after a CSO increased AGI risk by 39–75%, compared to recreating > 24 h after a CSO. However, estimated health risks were still high for some exposure scenarios that occurred > 24 h after a CSO. Crudes estimates determined that recreational activities along known CSO-impacted sites may account for 1–8% of all cases of salmonellosis, cryptosporidiosis, and giardiasis in the city of Philadelphia. Findings support risk reduction strategies that aim to reduce the frequency of CSOs in urban settings and may help target risk mitigation strategies.
•Human fecal contamination was measured along urban waterways used for recreation.•Recreation (e.g., swimming) was observed downstream of combined sewer overflows.•Microbial risk assessment models estimated the risk of illness due to recreation.•Risk was 38–75% higher when recreation occurred < 24 h after a sewer overflow.
Child sexual abuse (CSA) is a global public health problem. Assessing public attitudes toward child sex offenders is important since public opinions have affected judicial decision-making regarding ...sex offender management policies and laws. Study objectives were to assess university students' perceptions of offenders before and after a Sex Crimes Against Children course, and examine the potential anti-stigmatizing effect of interacting directly with people who had committed sex crimes. Compared with a previous study where only indirect contact was available, students who had direct contact with offenders reported more positive affective responses, had more positive attitudes toward sex offender treatment and rehabilitation, along with lower support for post-sentencing policies. Findings support the humanizing impact of interacting with members of the stigmatized group. Better informed public opinion is essential to support evidence-based crime prevention policies and ultimately prevent CSA.
A growing number of researchers study the laws that regulate the third sector and caution the legal expansion is a global crackdown on civil society. This article asks two questions of a thoroughly ...researched form of legal repression: restrictions on foreign aid to CSOs. First, do institutional differences affect the adoption of these laws? Second, do laws that appear different in content also have different causes? A two-stage analysis addresses these questions using data from 138 countries from 1993 to 2012. The first analysis studies the ratification of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and constitution-level differences regarding international treaties' status. The study then uses competing risk models to assess whether the factors that predict adoption vary across law types. The study finds that given ICCPR ratification, constitutions that privilege treaties above ordinary legislation create an institutional context that makes adoption less likely. Competing risk models suggest different laws have different risk factors, which implies these laws are more conceptually distinct than equivalent. Incorporating these findings in future work will strengthen the theory, methods, and concepts used to understand the legal approaches that regulate civil society.
As people become more health-conscious, more community sports organizations (CSOs) are emerging in society. The development of CSOs is often subject to very limited resources, and understanding its ...underlining principles is critical to maximizing the utility of available resources. Existing studies of CSOs are often empirical and adopt top-down methods of organizational management. This is partly because the inputs needed for such studies, for example, the interactions between community members, are often difficult to record. In this article, we perform an objective social network analysis on a real CSO with 2073 active members, with data collected over a five-year span on a mobile platform. Our study shows that the CSO members' network has a low density and weak densification and is assortative and obvious in community structure. With a classification algorithm called SC-CEE, we observe that the development of the CSO can be robustly divided into stages. We further observe that the relationship between specific stimulus and community evolution varies across development stages, implying that an organization's response strategy to change should be aligned with its stage of development. We then give practical guidance on the developmental priorities and response strategy of CSOs at different stages.
Individuals who reside in a country without regular authorisation generally find it difficult to access public medical services beyond emergency treatment. Even in countries with universal ...healthcare, there is often a gap between rights on paper and their implementation. Civil society organisations (CSOs) fill this gap by providing medical services to vulnerable populations, including irregular migrants. What, if any, are the ethical dilemmas that arise for CSO staff when delivering such services in countries with universal healthcare? Under what conditions do these dilemmas arise? And what strategies do CSO staff use to mitigate them? We answer these questions using 40 semi-structured interviews with CSO staff working in two European countries with high levels of irregularity, universal healthcare provisions on paper, and significant differences in approaches and availability of public services for irregular migrants: Italy and Spain. We show that CSO staff providing medical services to irregular migrants in places with universal healthcare coverage face a fundamental dilemma between
humanitarianism
and
equity
. CSO staff respond to the humanitarian belief in the value of taking all possible steps to prevent or alleviate human suffering, thus promoting a decent quality of life that includes access to both emergency and non-emergency care. In doing so, however, they run the risk of substituting rather than complementing public provisions, thereby preventing governments from assuming responsibility for these services in the long term. Individuals who acknowledge the existence of this dilemma generally oppose the creation of parallel structures; that is, services specifically developed for irregular migrants outside the public system; while those who ignore it essentially subscribe to a tiered system, giving up on considerations of equity. We argue that CSOs involved in the provision of healthcare to irregular migrants do not simply provide services; they also play an inherently political role.
Questions about aid reduction and its implications are crucial to understanding the future of civil society in many low- and middle-income countries and in postconflict states. Local civil society in ...these contexts is often heavily influenced by foreign donors. This article provides an introduction to this theme issue about aid reduction and local civil society. The objective of the introduction and issue articles is to examine the causes of aid reduction and donor withdrawal, the impacts on local civil society organizations (CSOs), and any resulting change in local civil society. We ask: What are the global trends in aid reduction? What impacts does aid reduction have on local CSOs? How do local CSOs respond and adapt? The contributions in this issue demonstrate that aid reduction is indeed global in scale and that impacts and adaptations are often strikingly similar across countries and regions. These similarities form the basis for building new theory but also prompt new questions about the global effects of aid on civil society.
This paper analyses the work carried out by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations (CSOs) in Libya from 2009 to 2020 to shed light on its ambivalent relationship to the ...EU externalisation of migration and border management. While also looking at Libyan organisations, and at initiatives such as EU-funded professionalisation projects, which aim to co-opt the nascent local civil society into the EU border externalisation mechanism, the paper largely focuses on international NGOs, with specific attention being paid to the Italian NGO CIR. The paper shows that even in the difficult Libyan context there is some potential for NGOs/CSOs to radically and effectively oppose EU externalisation, or at least try to do so through activities such as public information and advocacy. However, in a context in which migrants are systematically exposed to a wide range of abuses, and foreign or foreign-funded actors are seen with suspicion, NGOs/CSOs have limited room for manoeuvre. In fact, they mostly end up filling the gaps of the local migration and border management system on behalf of their (European) donors, thus supporting the smooth operation of externalised border management. This is also visible in the way NGOs/CSOs address human rights, interact with donors and local authorities, and perpetuate dichotomies and categorisations that support migration containment policies.
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