Fong Chng Saun

Background: There are rising concerns for the deterioration of outdoor thermal comfort (OTC) level as it influences the health and well-being of sensitive and vulnerable urban communities such as school children. However, the understanding of OTC among school children in an urban setting has been poorly highlighted in existing literature.

Methods: A cross-sectional quantitative study was conducted among secondary school students in a selected area within Greater Kuala Lumpur (GKL) so as to understand their thermal perception towards the urban outdoor environment. A clustered random sampling was used to gather a total of 236 students for this study. Meteorological data were collected concurrently with the questionnaire survey which was conducted during the peak urban heating hours (0800–2000) from July 2018 to January 2019.

Results: The secondary school students in the selected study area felt hot (n= 120, 51%) and experienced little discomfort (n= 144, 61%). If given a choice, 76%(n= 179) of the students preferred a cooler environment although 56%(n= 132) accepted the current thermal environment. Findings based on the on-site meteorological observations revealed that the students were constantly exposed to a mean of 32.7 C Physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) while the expected neutral temperature was found to be 25.1 C PET.

Conclusion: Based on these outcomes, it can be deduced that the students in this study showed traits of thermal acclimatization. Future studies should be conducted to identify the influence of other confounding factors, such as gender, ethnicity, and clothing variations among the secondary school students so as to ensure that the students are able to better adapt to the deteriorating OTC levels in urban outdoor spaces.

This study quantitatively investigated the scientific progress of walkability research landscape and its future prospects using bibliometric indicators to highlight the research hotspots. The results accentuated multifaceted nature of walkability research landscape with a strong association towards public health disciplines. Keyword co-occurrence analysis emphasized that majority of the walkability studies centred on the interactions between walking and other three main factors such as built environment attributes, transportation and obesity. Based on the identified research hotspots, a brief state-of-the-art review of walkability studies was presented. Future prospects based on the unexplored research gaps within the hotspots were also discussed. High correlation (r = 0.99, p < 0.05) between annual publications and citation counts demonstrated the significance of walkability studies to the contemporary scientific community. Being one of the comprehensive studies to evaluate the historic trajectory of walkability research landscape, the findings were expected to accelerate a comprehensive understanding of the walkability research domain that will assist future research direction.

Recognizing and mainstreaming pertinent walkability elements into the university campus planning is crucial to materialise green mandates of the campus, while enhancing social and economic sustainability. In one of such attempts, this transverse study investigated the walking motivations, built environment factors associated with campus walkability and the relative importance of the studied built environment factors in reference to the sociodemographic attributes from the viewpoint of the campus community in a tropical university campus in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. An online survey using a structured questionnaire was conducted between May and September 2019. The built environment factors associated with campus walkability were expressed and ranked as adjusted scores (AS). Meanwhile, multivariable logistic regression was deployed to examine the relative importance of the studied built environment factors in reference to the sociodemographic attributes of the campus community. Among 504 total responses acquired, proximity between complementary land uses (90.7%) was reported as the main motivation for walking. On the other hand, street connectivity and accessibility (AS: 97.62%) was described as the most opted built environment factor, followed by land use (AS: 96.76%), pedestrian infrastructure (AS: 94.25%), walking experience (AS: 87.07%), traffic safety (AS: 85.28%) and campus neighbourhood (AS: 59.62%), respectively. Among the sociodemographic attributes, no regular monthly income (OR = 3.162; 95% CI = 1.165–8.379; p < 0.05) and willingness to walk more than 60 min inside the campus per day (OR = 0.418; 95% CI = 0.243–0.720; p < 0.05) were significantly associated with the expression of higher importance towards the reported built environment factors in the multivariate analysis. In brief, the findings of this study were envisaged to elicit valuable empirical evidence for informed interventions and strengthening campus sustainable mobility policies.

Introduction: Many efforts have been made to identify natural alternatives to reduce the side effects of cytotoxic drugs in cancer treatment. With this in mind, the current study aimed to investigate the cytotoxicity effects of one of the multifloral Malaysian honey, Kelulut honey (Trigona itama), as a potential natural anticancer agent in stimulating apoptosis and cell cycle arrest to a human lung adenocarcinoma epithelial cell line (A549). Methods: The cells were treated with various concentrations of T. itama honey for 24, 48 and 72 h. The cyto-toxicity and cell viability were determined using trypan blue exclusion assay (TBEA) and flow cytometric analysis. Results: The moisture content in the analysed honey was 14.3 ± 0.8%, which was within the accepted international standard. The pH, electrical conductivity and proline content were 3.17 ± 0.02, 0.47 mS/cm-0.55 mS/cm and 19.1 mg/kg 20.2 mg/kg respectively. The findings demonstrated a significant dose and time-dependent inhibitory effect of T. itama honey with the maximum cytotoxic effects observed at 72 h with 20% concentration of T. itama honey, indicating 100% growth inhibition. Meanwhile, IC 50 of T. itama honey treatment for A549 cells was determined as 0.62% v/v. Moreover, T. itama honey had a promising cytotoxic effect and proven capable of inducing cell cycle arrest at G2/M phase at 72 h of exposure with IC 50 concentration. Conclusion: This study provided prefatory evidence on T. itama honey's significant anticancer activity against human lung cancer cell lines.

In response to a significant contribution of batik industries towards water pollution in Kelantan, this study sought to examine the environmental awareness of the community staying in the vicinity of batik manufacturing units in Kelantan. In this cross-sectional study, 160 participants were administered with interviewer-assisted questionnaire surveys between November 2013 and December 2013. Information pertaining to the participants’ awareness of the batik manufacturing process, nature and disposal of dyes as well as the associated environmental and health impacts due to improper wastewater discharges were recorded. Chi square and multivariate binary logistic regression model was deployed to determine the significance between the socio-demographic variables and the items assessed to explore their environmental awareness. Despite a limited awareness on the batik manufacturing process and chemical properties of dyes, more than half of the study participants were more likely to be aware of the dye disposal methods utilized by the manufacturing units as well as the environmental and health impacts of the wastewater discharges in their neighbourhood. Among the socio-demographic variables, having a formal education recorded a significant association with the nature of dye, dye disposal method, environmental and health impacts due to improper dye disposal. In a nutshell, this study contributed useful empirical insights on the current environmental awareness levels of the community near the batik manufacturing units in Kelantan to devise interventions for the cultivation of community-based surveillance.

Despite its notable role in the exacerbation of urban climate, Urban Heat Island (UHI) was poorly addressed, communicated and integrated into local urban policies of many developing countries. Such scenario often queried the level of UHI understanding amongst the key players who were involved in urban policy formulation. Hence, a qualitative study using Focus Group Discussions (FGD) was designed to investigate the awareness and knowledge level of stakeholders such as policy makers and practitioners in Greater Kuala Lumpur (GKL), an expanding socio-economic hub of a developing tropical country. The findings demonstrated a variable lack of awareness and knowledge about the concept of UHI, its status in GKL as well as organizational engagement in adaptation and mitigation initiatives among the study participants. Essentially, policy makers illustrated a facile awareness and knowledge towards UHI issues whereas practitioners displayed a more robust portfolio of factual understanding regarding the corresponding issues. In line with National Urbanization Policy's (NUP) aspiration to optimize urban developments that provide high quality of life, this study sheds some light on the exigency for UHI awareness creation and capacity building among the policy makers. This study also provides impactful prepositions for the articulation of necessary actions towards evidence-based urban policy formulation in future.

Global climate change, rapid urbanization and population explosion in major cities of Southeast Asia (SEA) are negatively impacting the well-being and liveability of the public in terms of deteriorating outdoor thermal comfort (OTC) levels. However, the available scholarly studies on OTC in the tropical region are insufficient. There is great potential for OTC studies to be used as indicators to measure the sustainable liveability of contemporary cities. As such, there is an immense need for more studies to be conducted in the tropical regions. However, the assessment approaches undertaken in the last decades clearly indicate that there is a need for improvisation. By considering this, this paper provides an overview of published studies that evaluated thermal comfort conditions in the outdoor setting in the tropical context of SEA. Methodological discrepancies and shortcomings are highlighted and discussed to propose a holistic approach for future OTC studies in SEA. The implementation of the proposed holistic approach in the upcoming studies will be beneficial for the improved reliability and integration of findings from studies conducted in various outdoor settings and localities within SEA.

Seasonal haze episodes and the associated inimical health impacts have become a regular crisis among the ASEAN countries. Even though many emerging experimental and epidemiological studies have documented the plausible health effects of the predominating toxic pollutants of haze, the consistency among the reported findings by these studies is poorly understood. By addressing such gap, this review aimed to critically highlight the evidence of physical and psychological health impacts of haze from the available literature in ASEAN countries. Systematic literature survey from six electronic databases across the environmental and medical disciplines was performed, and 20 peer-reviewed studies out of 384 retrieved articles were selected. The evidence pertaining to the health impacts of haze based on field survey, laboratory tests, modelling and time-series analysis were extracted for expert judgement. In specific, no generalization can be made on the reported physical symptoms as no specific symptoms recorded in all the reviewed studies except for throat discomfort. Consistent evidence was found for the increase in respiratory morbidity, especially for asthma, whilst the children and the elderly are deemed to be the vulnerable groups of the haze-induced respiratory ailments. A consensual conclusion on the association between the cardiovascular morbidity and haze is unfeasible as the available studies are scanty and geographically limited albeit of some reported increased cases. A number of modelling and simulation studies demonstrated elevating respiratory mortality rates due to seasonal haze exposures over the years. Besides, evidence on cancer risk is inconsistent where industrial and vehicular emissions are also expected to play more notable roles than mere haze exposure. There are insufficient regional studies to examine the association between the mental health and haze. Limited toxicological studies in ASEAN countries often impede a comprehensive understanding of the biological mechanism of haze-induced toxic pollutants on human physiology. Therefore, the lack of consistent evidence among the reported haze-induced health effects as highlighted in this review calls for more intensive longitudinal and toxicological studies with greater statistical power to disseminate more reliable and congruent findings to empower the institutional health planning among the ASEAN countries.

Urban Heat Island (UHI) is a notable thermal phenomenon of any tropical city in relation to increased urbanization. It records a positive urban thermal balance due to higher air temperatures in the densely built areas compared to the rural or sub-urban peripheries under the same climate conditions. The rapid infrastructure development in high-risk areas of tropical cities will be exposing the urban population to extreme heat. As predicted by International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) climate change scenario, some of the cities in Southeast Asia may be as much as 4 °C warmer by 2050. Being a Southeast Asian country, this would be a consequential threat to the capital cities of Malaysia which suffered inevitable territorial urban development that manifested into formation of severe UHIs with an average gain in surface temperature of 8.47 °C between 1997 and 2013. The increasing surface temperature is mainly associated with the reduction in vegetation cover, open burning, forest fires, land use changes, land clearing, industrial and traffic emissions. Besides, it also exhibits the potential to emerge as one of the public health menace with reduced outdoor thermal comfort levels, heat exhaustions, heat cramps and respiratory ailments among the tropical city dwellers in various urban settings. To overcome this, a number of mitigation approaches such as increase of vegetation cover, replacement of cooling pavement materials and architectural innovations are studied as viable UHI remedies in the context of Malaysia. In addition, target driven assessments are intended to meet the city population’s health needs to assist in designing initiatives to effectively reduce UHI effects. In line with these, this chapter would provide the state-of-art of UHI, known contributing factors and impacts, community needs and other mitigation efforts targeting at urban temperature reductions via case study approaches in the context of Malaysia.