I-Team In-Depth

A Dangerous Mix: High Ozone Levels And Obesity

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For the 29% of Connecticut adults who live with obesity, summer brings a difficult form of air pollution. Ground-level ozone is the colorless, odorless gas formed when auto exhaust reacts with sunlight at temperatures above 80 degrees. Ozone can be dangerous for people who have higher body mass indexes. If the pandemic shutdown were now, those with obesity and others who suffer from the adverse effects of ground-level ozone might have caught a break. Officials know that other forms of pollution dropped significantly during the early spring.

So Far, Colebrook Residents Elude COVID-19

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The sleepy town of Colebrook has no traffic lights, no police department, no public sewer or water system and no confirmed cases of COVID-19. “Knock on wood,” said Colebrook Board of Finance Chair James Millar. “I think we’re lucky. I wouldn’t say that we are doing anything that’s not being done by the rest of the state.”

On the Massachusetts border in Litchfield County, Colebrook is among eight small towns in the western and eastern portions of Connecticut that so far have not had a resident test positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which has killed hundreds of thousands worldwide. Litchfield County had 446 confirmed cases and 24 deaths as of Monday afternoon.

Outdoors A Respite As Coronavirus Restrictions Tighten

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Residents took advantage of the sunny weather over the weekend to get out of their houses and enjoy the outdoors. In Edgewood Park in New Haven, there were people on bicycles and skateboards, people practicing yoga and playing cards in the sunshine, enjoying a reprieve from their coronavirus concerns and Gov. Ned Lamont’s increased restrictions, which begin today. Lamont on Sunday ordered that all “non-essential” workers stay home beginning at 8 tonight. Some “essential” operations, including health care providers, food stores, gas stations and pet stores, will remain open. For a complete list, go here.

Staying Home: Nice Work If You Can Get It

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When it comes to the worldwide spread of the coronavirus, people like Leo Laffitte are on the front lines. Laffitte isn’t a health care provider. He works in facilities at Hartford Public Library and, amid the coronavirus pandemic, Laffitte is one of those workers whose jobs require he be physically present and in close contact with a variety of people, with no opportunity to work remotely, as so many employers have advised their workers to do. (Update: On Friday, the library announced it will close through March 31.)

There is another class of employees whose members are even more vulnerable. While health authorities tell people to stay home if they feel sick in the face of COVID-19, that advice is complicated for low-wage earners, of whom two-thirds are women, or for another overwhelmingly female group of workers such as certified nurse assistants and teaching assistants.

Environmental Health

Tracking Types Of Terrain That Harbor Disease-Carrying Ticks

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On a sunny, cool day as fall gave way to winter, a team of biologists and technicians dragged white cloths through the underbrush at Lord Creek Farm in Lyme. They were looking for blacklegged ticks, which carry Lyme disease and four other deadly illnesses. As ticks attached to the cloth, the team counted them and put them in jars for further study at their lab at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven. Japanese barberry bushes grew thickly beneath the trees at this private horse farm that for years has cooperated with Lyme disease researchers. As the group dragged cloths, they noticed ticks on each other’s pant legs and coats, and began to pick them off.

I-Team In-Depth

Dead Fish, Condoms, Brown Foam: Sewage Has Chokehold On Black Rock Harbor

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On April 25, 2018, Patrick Clough walked onto a dock at Fayerweather Yacht Club on Black Rock Harbor in western Bridgeport. He looked down. Swirling around the dock was a brown, foamy slick. Women’s sanitary products and other objects floated in it. He posted a photo of the discharge on two Black Rock neighborhood Facebook pages, writing “This is disgusting.”

A week before Clough captured that photo, equipment malfunctioned at the Bridgeport West Side Water Pollution Control Facility.

I-Team In-Depth

Cost Of Modernizing Century-Old Infrastructure Means Foul Spills At Black Rock Harbor Will Go On For Decades

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On the west and east sides of narrow Black Rock Harbor in western Bridgeport, industry, school, recreation and sewage treatment converge. At the most inland tip are Santa Energy’s oil tanks. On the east side stretch asphalt runways at Pratt & Whitney’s test airport and a city landfill. On the west side stand O & G Industries sand and stone yard, an empty industrial building, a city landfill, a trash-to-energy plant, the regional aquaculture high school, a seaport, shops, a restaurant and sailing teams’ docks. Last on this list is the Bridgeport West Side Water Pollution Control Facility, the city’s largest sewage treatment plant, which began work this year on a 20-year plan to correct chronic overflows.

I-Team In-Depth

Citizen Scientists Steer Efforts To Jumpstart Black Rock Harbor’s Recovery

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At 6:25 a.m. on the cloudy, humid first day of summer, two teenage aquaculture students huddle at the back of their school boat as it backs away from a dock in Black Rock Harbor in western Bridgeport. Charlotte Hickey grips a heavy cylindrical metal probe that is about a foot and a half long. The students call this “the beast.” It contains electronics that precisely measure water conditions. Sienna Matregrano holds a clipboard and pen, ready to record depth, temperature, salinity, dissolved oxygen, fluorescence and turbidity. Both girls are seniors at Bridgeport Regional Vocational Aquaculture School.

How Much Plastic Is In Your Body? Scientists Turn To Oysters, Mussels For Clues

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J. Evan Ward knelt on a dock jutting into Eastern Point Bay at the eastern end of Long Island Sound and hauled up a floating cage containing oysters. These oysters came here from nearby Mason’s Crab Cove and serve as the resident population for lab studies that Ward, a professor of marine sciences, conducts at the University of Connecticut Avery Point. He studies these and other oysters and sediment gathered on boats operated by Norm Bloom and Sons of Norwalk. Oysters are master water filterers.

Environmental Health

Mold Concerns Rise With The Sea Level

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A day after Hurricane Sandy hit, Nancy Arnold waded down her basement stairs and saw five feet of storm surge partially submerging her furnace and hot water heater. After the water eventually retreated, and the local fire department pumped out the rest, Arnold had another worry: mold. A husband and wife who had done painting for the Arnolds showed up and offered to wash the home’s lower level with bleach. “Where would I have been without that,” Arnold wondered this summer, “because they knew about the mold, and they Cloroxed the whole basement. If there’s another storm, I don’t know if they’re up to do that again.”

Arnold has lived in her house near the end of Whitfield Street in Guilford since 1962.  She and her family evacuated to a local community center for six hours during the worst of Sandy’s tempest.