Alumnus works on anti-bioterrorism and farm safety projects at N.C. Agromedicine Institute
Josh Dail tests a machine that monitors air and water quality. He also studies farm equipment safety and recently assisted in a four-year study to help field workers avoid heat-related injuries.
(Photo by Art Latham)
(Photo by Art Latham)
A recent College alumnus is at the cutting edge of anti-bioterror research.
Josh Dail (2001, agricultural business management) coordinates logistics for the first phase of a U.S. Department of Agriculture bioterrorism detection weather machine project at the North Carolina Agromedicine Institute in Greenville. The institute is a joint venture of N.C. State, N.C. A&T State and East Carolina universities.
As a social research assistant, he also studies the need for a farm equipment safety program and serves as a liaison between county Cooperative Extension agents and the institute.
"We're testing the reliability of three weather machines," Dail says. "All data - which includes temperature, humidity, winds, rain rate, barometer, radiation count and the forecast - are transmitted via satellite to a server and can be viewed over the Internet. Each of the bio machines has a specialized group of sensors that monitor air and water quality."
Dail, a Greenville native who's glad to be working near home, originally intended to major in architecture at N.C. State but changed his mind after a few design classes. A friend told him to check out the College, where he met with Dr. Arnie Oltmans, a professor and the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department's undergraduate coordinator.
"Professor Oltmans was one of the nicest and most helpful professors that I encountered during my years at N.C. State and is the reason that I chose the field of study that I did," says Dail.
The path through that field led Dail down several byways, which eventually led him into other fields: the flat, sweltering summer croplands of down-east North Carolina.
Working with the project's principal investigator, Dr. John Sabella, N.C. Agromedicine Institute's interim director, Dail handled logistics for the final year of a four-year Agromedicine Institute study on how field workers can avoid heat-related injuries. Motivated by an N.C. Department of Labor request to study reports of fatalities, brain damage and other serious heat-related injuries affecting farm field workers, researchers hope the study's findings help farms improve their laborers' health, safety and productivity.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the study's data-gathering process bore little relation to an air-conditioned classroom. Dail and more than 10 student helpers, a nurse and other professionals slogged from field to field, talking with workers.
Dail coordinated field team visits to three contracting farms, all state-classified as "gold star" for employing only migrant workers who are in this country on temporary agricultural worker (H-2A) visas. He organized transportation and helped the field team perform worker assessments, kept financial records and disbursed the $10 an hour cooperating workers earned.
"That's almost as much as they'd make a day in Mexico," he says.
His daily routine also included rising at 3 a.m. from June through August to meet the team at ECU's West Research Campus at the old Voice of America radio antenna field and driving to the Wilson area to one of 10 Mexican worker houses by 5 a.m. (The study was to focus on cucumber field workers, but downy mildew threatened this year's crop, so researchers included workers from tobacco, honeydew melon and cantaloupe fields.)
"They were long days," Dail notes.
While field sensors measured temperature, humidity and ultraviolet light, the researchers studied the most dangerous hours to be in the heat, early heat stress symptoms, best hydration methods and how cultural or behavioral patterns affect workers' illness risks.
"The Mexican workers didn't seem to be that stressed by the heat," he recalls, "but the research team members were. After a few hours in the heat, they tended to get crabby and uncooperative.
"They don't seem to drink much," Dail says of the workers. "Early in the morning they might make some kind of banana-and-milk mix and off they'd go to the fields. They'd get a soda break and there was water on the back of the trucks, but they didn't seem to use it much. And they'd drink beer at night."
As heat sensors measured field temperatures, researchers tested worker blood pressure, respiratory rates and ear, mouth and forehead temperatures, checked pulse rates while workers stood or lay down and discussed their eating and sleeping patterns.
The participating workers made $10 per session for their cooperation, with a bonus. Since cognitive skills deterioration is a heat stroke symptom, Amanda Fields, an ECU student who translated for the researchers, tested workers' memories by reciting a series of numbers to repeat both backward and forward.
Researchers hope to create research-based fact sheets to hang in migrant workers' residences and in barns and for farm owners and others.
Dail's summer field research included an unexpected side effect. "I used to like winter," he says. "Now summer is my favorite season."
The Agromedicine Institute's N.C. State coordinator is Dr. Greg Cope, department extension leader in the College's Environmental and Molecular Toxicology Department.
- Art Latham
Josh Dail (2001, agricultural business management) coordinates logistics for the first phase of a U.S. Department of Agriculture bioterrorism detection weather machine project at the North Carolina Agromedicine Institute in Greenville. The institute is a joint venture of N.C. State, N.C. A&T State and East Carolina universities.
As a social research assistant, he also studies the need for a farm equipment safety program and serves as a liaison between county Cooperative Extension agents and the institute.
"We're testing the reliability of three weather machines," Dail says. "All data - which includes temperature, humidity, winds, rain rate, barometer, radiation count and the forecast - are transmitted via satellite to a server and can be viewed over the Internet. Each of the bio machines has a specialized group of sensors that monitor air and water quality."
Dail, a Greenville native who's glad to be working near home, originally intended to major in architecture at N.C. State but changed his mind after a few design classes. A friend told him to check out the College, where he met with Dr. Arnie Oltmans, a professor and the Agricultural and Resource Economics Department's undergraduate coordinator.
"Professor Oltmans was one of the nicest and most helpful professors that I encountered during my years at N.C. State and is the reason that I chose the field of study that I did," says Dail.
The path through that field led Dail down several byways, which eventually led him into other fields: the flat, sweltering summer croplands of down-east North Carolina.
Working with the project's principal investigator, Dr. John Sabella, N.C. Agromedicine Institute's interim director, Dail handled logistics for the final year of a four-year Agromedicine Institute study on how field workers can avoid heat-related injuries. Motivated by an N.C. Department of Labor request to study reports of fatalities, brain damage and other serious heat-related injuries affecting farm field workers, researchers hope the study's findings help farms improve their laborers' health, safety and productivity.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, the study's data-gathering process bore little relation to an air-conditioned classroom. Dail and more than 10 student helpers, a nurse and other professionals slogged from field to field, talking with workers.
Dail coordinated field team visits to three contracting farms, all state-classified as "gold star" for employing only migrant workers who are in this country on temporary agricultural worker (H-2A) visas. He organized transportation and helped the field team perform worker assessments, kept financial records and disbursed the $10 an hour cooperating workers earned.
"That's almost as much as they'd make a day in Mexico," he says.
His daily routine also included rising at 3 a.m. from June through August to meet the team at ECU's West Research Campus at the old Voice of America radio antenna field and driving to the Wilson area to one of 10 Mexican worker houses by 5 a.m. (The study was to focus on cucumber field workers, but downy mildew threatened this year's crop, so researchers included workers from tobacco, honeydew melon and cantaloupe fields.)
"They were long days," Dail notes.
While field sensors measured temperature, humidity and ultraviolet light, the researchers studied the most dangerous hours to be in the heat, early heat stress symptoms, best hydration methods and how cultural or behavioral patterns affect workers' illness risks.
"The Mexican workers didn't seem to be that stressed by the heat," he recalls, "but the research team members were. After a few hours in the heat, they tended to get crabby and uncooperative.
"They don't seem to drink much," Dail says of the workers. "Early in the morning they might make some kind of banana-and-milk mix and off they'd go to the fields. They'd get a soda break and there was water on the back of the trucks, but they didn't seem to use it much. And they'd drink beer at night."
As heat sensors measured field temperatures, researchers tested worker blood pressure, respiratory rates and ear, mouth and forehead temperatures, checked pulse rates while workers stood or lay down and discussed their eating and sleeping patterns.
The participating workers made $10 per session for their cooperation, with a bonus. Since cognitive skills deterioration is a heat stroke symptom, Amanda Fields, an ECU student who translated for the researchers, tested workers' memories by reciting a series of numbers to repeat both backward and forward.
Researchers hope to create research-based fact sheets to hang in migrant workers' residences and in barns and for farm owners and others.
Dail's summer field research included an unexpected side effect. "I used to like winter," he says. "Now summer is my favorite season."
The Agromedicine Institute's N.C. State coordinator is Dr. Greg Cope, department extension leader in the College's Environmental and Molecular Toxicology Department.
- Art Latham