Darren J. Beriro

Background: Empirical evidence on the health impacts of brownfield land – previously developed land that may be contaminated – remains limited, mainly due to poorly defined exposures and pathways. Here we assessed associations between an area-level contamination hazard score and emergency hospital admissions across England, using the score as a proxy for the potential contamination associated with brownfield land. Methods: We used Lower-layer Super Output Area (LSOA)-level population-weighted contamination hazard scores in Bayesian hierarchical models to examine the risk of emergency hospital admission (age- and sex-standardised, 2010–2019) with a primary diagnosis of i) all causes (excluding external causes), ii) respiratory diseases, and iii) cardiovascular diseases (CVD). Models were adjusted for deprivation, population density, tobacco expenditure, green space, urbanicity, and ethnicity, and included spatially structured and unstructured random effects to account for residual spatial autocorrelation between neighbouring areas. Stratified analyses assessed potential effect modification by deprivation, urban/rural classification, and region. Results: We included 42,875,231 admissions for all natural causes, 6,657,050 for respiratory diseases, and 4,393,461 for CVD across 32,844 LSOAs in England. LSOAs with higher contamination hazard scores showed a non-linear decreasing trend in relative risk (RR) for all health outcomes. Spatial variation was evident, with stronger negative associations in urban and the least deprived LSOAs, while rural and more deprived LSOAs showed weaker associations or greater uncertainty. Region-specific analyses demonstrated inverse associations for all outcomes in London and for all natural causes and respiratory admissions in the North West and East of England. Other regions showed no consistent pattern across outcomes. Conclusion: Higher contamination hazard scores were associated with lower emergency hospital admission risks. This suggests that areas with a greater legacy of potentially contaminating land uses do not necessarily experience poorer contemporary population health. The inverse associations may partly reflect subsequent remediation and urban regeneration, although the underlying mechanisms require further investigation. Highlights: A national brownfield study used contamination hazard scores as an exposure proxy. Higher contamination hazard scores were linked to lower emergency admission risks. Inverse associations were strongest in urban areas, least deprived areas and London. Lower risks may reflect redevelopment, not a protective effect of brownfield land.

The remediation of brownfield is vital to sustainable place-making and levelling up across the country. It provides an improved local environment that can unlock regeneration and the social, economic and ecological revitalisation of communities. However the total benefits of remediation are not fully understood or utilised in decision making. As a result, sites can remain derelict for years and opportunities to optimise value from public and private investment are missed.Jacobs and BGS undertook research for the Environment Agency in England to evaluate the feasibility of developing a tool, which included:A virtual workshop using MURAL to enable digital interaction and collaboration to refine scope, define data requirements and map project stakeholders; Primary benefit and user requirements research, including looking at the potential impact of a tool through the development of a Theory of Change model and focussed interviews with key stakeholders to understand user requirements. Review of academic and grey literature; Accelerated design sprint to frame the problem/opportunity, explore technology agonistic solutions for the tool and develop into a storyboard. Develop a low fidelity prototype as a blueprint of how a tool might look. The outcome of the work indicated there is both a need and demand for such a tool. It was also demonstrated to be technically feasible through the literature review and design sprint. Such a tool would have an extremely positive impact on the perceptions of brownfield, shifting it from a constraint to an opportunity. The presentation will provide a summary of the methods, an overview of the results and a demonstration of a prototype digital tool. Our disucssion will focus on the opportunities presented by using systems thinking combined with design thinking to influence the approach taken to planning and redeveloping brownfield sites.

Shale rock core from the Bowland Shale Formation, UK, was analysed in the laboratory using Rock-Eval pyrolysis and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR). These methods are used to characterize the organic constituents of soil and rock. This research is a proof-of-concept study to investigate whether regression models developed using FTIR and Rock-Eval data for the same length of core can be used to estimate selected Rock-Eval parameters. The accuracy of the regression models was assessed using statistical methods, the results of which were used to choose preferred models for each Rock-Eval parameter. The models produced were shown to have an acceptable level of uncertainty for total organic carbon and S1, S2 and S3 outputs, which led us to conclude that these are potentially suitable for estimating unknown down-core Rock-Eval parameter values. Conversely, the model for the temperature of the maximum rate of hydrocarbon generation ( T _max ) had higher variability in the cross-validation data above the acceptable level of uncertainty, which could lead to erroneous estimates. Down-core interpolations of selected Rock-Eval parameters could be practically achieved by modelling FTIR data by maintaining standard sample frequencies for Rock-Eval while supplementing with higher frequencies for FTIR and chemometric analysis.