Effect of Air Pollution Exposure on Children and Elderly’s Health and Neurological Functions

Leaded fuel used by piston-engine aircraft is the largest source of airborne lead emissions in the United States. Previous studies have found higher blood lead levels in children living near airports where leaded aviation fuel is used. However, little is known about the health effects on adults. This study is the first to examine the association between exposure to aircraft operations that use leaded aviation fuel and adult cardiovascular mortality. We estimated the association between annual piston-engine air traffic and cardiovascular mortality among adults age 65 and older near 40 North Carolina airports during 2000 to 2017. We used several strategies to minimize the potential for bias due to omitted variables and confounding from other health hazards at airports, including coarsened exact matching, location-specific intercepts, and adjustment for jet-engine and other air traffic that does not use leaded fuel. Our findings are mixed but suggestive of adverse effects. We found higher rates of cardiovascular mortality within a few kilometers downwind of single- and multi-runway airports, though these results are not always statistically significant. We also found significantly higher cardiovascular mortality rates within a few kilometers and downwind of single-runway airports in years with more piston-engine air traffic. We did not consistently find a statistically significant association between cardiovascular mortality rates and piston-engine air traffic near multi-runway airports, where there was greater uncertainty in our measure of the distance between populations and aviation exposures. These results suggest that (i) reducing lead emissions from aviation could yield health benefits for adults, and (ii) more refined data are needed to obtain more precise estimates of these benefits. Subject Areas: Toxic Substances, Health, Epidemiology, Air Pollution, Ambient Air Quality. JEL codes: Q53, I18. Full article

Background: Exposure to air pollution is associated with acute pediatric asthma exacerbations, including reduced lung function, rescue medication usage, and increased symptoms; however, most studies are limited in investigating longitudinal changes in these acute effects. This study aims to investigate the effects of daily air pollution exposure on acute pediatric asthma exacerbation risk using a repeated-measures design. Methods: We conducted a panel study of 40 children aged 8–16 years with moderate-to-severe asthma. We deployed the Biomedical REAI-Time Health Evaluation (BREATHE) Kit developed in the Los Angeles PRISMS Center to continuously monitor personal exposure to particulate matter of aerodynamic diameter < 2.5 µm (PM_2.5), relative humidity and temperature, geolocation (GPS), and asthma outcomes including lung function, medication use, and symptoms for 14 days. Hourly ambient (PM_2.5, nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), ozone (O₃)) and traffic-related (nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and PM_2.5) air pollution exposures were modeled based on location. We used mixed-effects models to examine the association of same day and lagged (up to 2 days) exposures with daily changes in % predicted forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV₁) and % predicted peak expiratory flow (PEF), count of rescue inhaler puffs, and symptoms. Results: Participants were on average 12.0 years old (range: 8.4–16.8) with mean (SD) morning %predicted FEV₁ of 67.9% (17.3%) and PEF of 69.1% (18.4%) and 1.4 (3.5) puffs per day of rescue inhaler use. Participants reported chest tightness, wheeze, trouble breathing, and cough symptoms on 36.4%, 17.5%, 32.3%, and 42.9%, respectively (n = 217 person-days). One SD increase in previous day O₃ exposure was associated with reduced morning (beta [95% CI]: −4.11 [−6.86, −1.36]), evening (−2.65 [−5.19, −0.10]) and daily average %predicted FEV₁ (−3.45 [−6.42, −0.47]). Daily (lag 0) exposure to traffic-related PM_2.5 exposure was associated with reduced morning %predicted PEF (−3.97 [−7.69, −0.26]) and greater odds of “feeling scared of trouble breathing” symptom (odds ratio [95% CI]: 1.83 [1.03, 3.24]). Exposure to ambient O₃, NO_x, and NO was significantly associated with increased rescue inhaler use (rate ratio [95% CI]: O₃ 1.52 [1.02, 2.27], NO_x 1.61 [1.23, 2.11], NO 1.80 [1.37, 2.35]). Conclusions: We found significant associations of air pollution exposure with lung function, rescue inhaler use, and “feeling scared of trouble breathing.” Our study demonstrates the potential of informatics and wearable sensor technologies at collecting highly resolved, contextual, and personal exposure data for understanding acute pediatric asthma triggers. Full article

We studied the health effects of economic development in heavily urbanized areas, where congestion poses a challenge to environmental conditions. We employed detailed data from air pollution and birth records around the metropolitan area of São Paulo, Brazil, between 2002 and 2009. During this period, the megacity experienced sustained growth marked by the increases in employment rates and ownership of durable goods, including automobiles. While better economic conditions are expected to improve infant health, air pollution that accompanies it is expected to do the opposite. To untangle these two effects, we focused on episodes of thermal inversion—meteorological phenomena that exogenously lock pollutants closer to the ground—to estimate the causal effects of in utero exposure to air pollution. Auxiliary results confirmed a positive relationship between thermal inversions and several air pollutants, and we ultimately found that exposure to inversion episodes during the last three months of pregnancy led to sizable reductions in birth weight and increases in the incidence of preterm births. Increased pollution exposure induced by inversions also has a significant impact over fetal survival as measured by the size of live-birth cohorts. Full article

We studied the relationship of prenatal and post-birth exposure to particulate matter < 2.5 μm in diameter (PM_2.5) with infant mortality for all births between 2011 and 2013 in the conterminous United States. Prenatal exposure was defined separately for each trimester, post-birth exposure was defined in the 12 months following the prenatal period, and infant mortality was defined as death in the first year of life. For the analysis, we merged over 10 million cohort-linked live birth–infant death records with daily, county-level PM_2.5 concentration data and then fit a Structural Equation Model controlling for several individual- and county-level confounders. We estimated direct paths from the two exposures to infant death as well as indirect paths from the prenatal exposure to the outcome through preterm birth and low birth weight. Prenatal PM_2.5 exposure was positively associated with infant death across all trimesters, although the relationship was strongest in the third trimester. The direct pathway from the prenatal exposure to the outcome accounted for most of this association. Estimates for the post-birth PM_2.5–infant death relationship were less precise. The results from our study add to a growing literature that provides evidence in favor of the potential harmful effects on human health of low levels of air pollution. Full article

A growing body of literature has documented the negative impacts of air pollution on labor productivity, especially the effects of fine particulate matter. In this paper, we build on this literature by dissecting two channels of how particulate matter affects labor productivity: decreasing labor supply through damaging the physical functioning of the human body, and decreasing the marginal productivity of labor through damaging the cognitive functioning of the human brain. Using the household panel survey from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) spanning 2000 to 2015 and combining that information with remotely sensed data on exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5), namely, the most harmful air pollution, we find a significantly negative effect of PM2.5 (instrumented by thermal inversion) on labor productivity. We also find that workers who are male, without a college degree, and are employed in outdoor occupations are mainly affected by PM2.5 through decreasing working hours, whereas college-educated workers employed in indoor occupations are mainly affected by PM2.5 through decreasing unit wages. We provide suggestive evidence that health impacts are behind our measured labor-productivity losses as we find significantly lower metrics in physical activity and increasing disease prevalence under higher exposure to PM2.5. Full article