According to the Environmental Protection Agency (1999), there are presently six million children living with asthma in the United States, making asthma one of the most common and costly childhood diseases. The objective of this study is to examine possible associations between daily concentrations of urban air pollutants and health center visits for asthma in an economically disadvantaged population in Philadelphia, a city of nearly 2 million. Primarily diagnosed asthma visits and air quality data were obtained from health registers of 9 district health centers and 11 fixed air-monitoring stations, respectively. Pollution data include daily measures of particulate matter (PM10), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), and carbon monoxide (CO). There were a total of 6,595 health center visits for asthma among children aged 0 to 7 years from 1994 to 1998. The majority of these children were African American (83%). Time-series analyses are being used to study the short-term association between ambient air pollution levels and aggregated health center asthma data. The pollutant variables will be analyzed at 12-hour lag-times to account for short-latency periods in the manifestation of asthma. To detect the temporal association between the time-pattern in air pollution data and the time-pattern in health center data, seasonal variability and weather variables will be considered.
Learning Objectives: 1. Articulate air pollution's relationship to childhood asthma. 2. Assess the role of socioeconomic factors in childhood asthma. 3. Describe the lag-time relationship between pollution exposure and subsequent asthma health center visits
Keywords: Asthma, Children
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.