Outdoor Community and Residential Pollen Measurements in the Urban Core of an Agricultural Region: CBPR Focused on Low-to-Middle Income, Older Adults with Asthma and/or COPD in Central CA

We can control asthma through proper clinical and environmental management and education. To date, allied health professionals like respiratory therapists have not typically been trained in environmental health sciences and engineering concepts critical to air and environmental quality. Simultaneously, the U.S. population is growing and aging; seniors of low-to-middle income families are working and living longer. We need to assist both the community providers and the potential patients. One way of reaching these sub-populations is through local health and environmental justice coalitions focused on specific topics like respiratory health. We conducted in Visalia, CA a community-based participatory research project with a prospective, cross-sectional repeated measures design. Goals/specific aims included collection of quantitative and qualitative process, impact and home environment and health-related outcomes data. Here we present pollen measurements outdoors away from major sources (agricultural fields, large pollinating trees, etc) at a community central site and participant homes in the 1st seasonal (cooling, spring-summer) sampling, July, 2009. Weather was hot and dry with light winds. Co-located active (reference) and passive (PAAS) samplers were used. Overall, we observed spatial variability in pollen counts, and counts were typically lower at homes—regardless of grass, trees, flowers or potted plants present—compared to the central site near a freeway. These data are new in Tulare County; the San Joaquin Valley has few pollen count stations in the national network. Our study suggests—given the region's burden of respiratory ailments and poor air quality—routine pollen counts should be added to regional/state agency air monitoring.