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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Tracey J. Woodruff, PhD, MPH1, Nathalie Simon, PhD2, and Charles Griffiths, PhD2. (1) Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation, United States Environmental Protection Agency, 75 Hawthorne Street(SPE-1), San Francisco, CA 94105, 415.947.4277, woodruff.tracey@epa.gov, (2) Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation, US Environmental Protection Agency, 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., MS 1809, Washington, DC 20460
Studies show that short-term increases in exposure to air pollution can exacerbate asthma. These studies have mostly used emergency room visits and hospital admissions for asthma as the measure of asthma exacerbation. Asthma exacerbation also includes less severe outcomes, such as increased medication use. It is difficult to ascertain the affects on air pollution on less severe asthma exacerbation because of limited data sources. We use a novel dataset of daily asthma prescriptions to evaluate the relationship between short term exposure to air pollution and milder asthma exacerbation in children. Daily asthma prescription data were obtained for Los Angeles and San Francisco metropolitan areas from NDC Health Information Services (NDC) for 1996-1999. NDC tracks prescriptions dispensed from about 60% of pharmacies in the US, representing about 72% of all prescriptions. Prescriptions for asthma related therapies were stratified by age and asthma severity, defined as mild intermittent, mild persistent, moderate persistent and severe persistent based on National Institutes of Health treatment guidelines for asthma. Daily air pollution data were obtained for particulate matter, ozone, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide for monitors in San Francisco and Los Angeles from the state of California. Daily temperature and humidity were obtained from the National Climatic Data Center. Analysis of the daily relationship between asthma prescriptions and air pollution, after controlling for weather, will be presented and the utility of the prescription database as a proxy for asthma exacerbation will be discussed. Views presented are of the authors and not necessarily of the US EPA.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Air Pollutants, Asthma
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
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.