Impacts on health due to long-term passive hydrothermal degassing – IHYDE

To answer those above questions, our highly transdisciplinary project will combine innovative biology experiments, renown epidemiology approaches along with state-of-the-art of geochemical volcanic gas sampling and numerical modelling.
The project will be organized into 4 interconnected scientific work packages centralized by a management coordination
WP, which will all feed an integrative WP where the science meets the stakeholders.

Our primary objective is to consider multiple factors that govern the magnitude of volcanic gas health hazards such as gas concentrations, gas dispersion in the atmosphere, the longevity or duration of the event in order to quantify the population's exposure to passive hydrothermal degassing. The second objective is to constrain its potential effect on health via experimental biology and epidemiology approaches. Public authorities and health departments dealing with, as well as populations exposed to, volcanic gases, will be the immediate beneficiaries of this work.
We will (i) oversee the appropriate integration of the multi-disciplinary data acquired, with the goal of maximizing the information learned about the potential health impact of
hydrothermal plumes at these unrest volcanoes and (ii) identify the exposed inhabited zones, which will allow
stakeholders to devise mitigation strategies to reduce the occurrence of respiratory diseases in the population.

Species presents in gas plumes other than H2S may be considered as the potential drivers of the biological response, which will open interesting perspectives for potential follow-up work upon completion of IHYDE.

About 10% of the worldwide population lives in the vicinity of active or historically active volcanoes. A common aspect of the activity at most volcanic edifices is volcanic degassing. Thus, millions of people are potentially exposed to volcanic gases. Despite the scarcity of studies on the health effects of long-term exposure to volcanic-hydrothermal plumes, these effects in such areas are well recognized and it has been shown that persistent, passive and/or hydrothermal degassing can be as harmful as volcanoes with sporadic eruption, especially for long-term degassing. However, these impacts are likely to be underestimated since (i) studies regarding human health effects of exposure to volcanic gases have typically focused on eruptions and one-time exposure, neglecting continuous passive degassing, and (ii) the extent of volcanic gas dispersal is not always considered. Hence, we plan to answer three main questions: (1) What is the chemical composition of volcanic gas emitted at the summit from fumaroles in hydrothermal systems? (2) How does the plume generated by the fumaroles disperse? (3) What are the cardiorespiratory effects resulting from passive hydrothermal degassing? To answer those questions, our highly transdisciplinary project will combine innovative biology experiments, renown epidemiology approaches along with state-of-the-art of geochemical gas sampling and numerical modelling. Our primary objective is to consider multiple factors that govern the magnitude of volcanic gas health hazards such as gas concentrations, gas dispersion in the atmosphere, the longevity or duration of the event in order to quantify the population's exposure to passive hydrothermal degassing. The second objective is to constrain its potential effect on health via experimental biology and epidemiology approaches. Then, our third objective will be to transfer the scientific knowledge gained in this project to society through developing and co-implementing sustainable solutions with and for local communities and the decision makers.