Grantee Research Project Results
2011 Progress Report: Using Vital Statistics Natality Data to Assess the Impact of Environmental Policy: The Examples of Superfund, the Toxic Release Inventory, and E-ZPass
EPA Grant Number: R834793Title: Using Vital Statistics Natality Data to Assess the Impact of Environmental Policy: The Examples of Superfund, the Toxic Release Inventory, and E-ZPass
Investigators: Currie, Janet
Institution: Princeton University
EPA Project Officer: Hahn, Intaek
Project Period: May 1, 2011 through April 30, 2014
Project Period Covered by this Report: May 1, 2011 through April 30,2012
Project Amount: $492,103
RFA: Exploring Linkages Between Health Outcomes and Environmental Hazards, Exposures, and Interventions for Public Health Tracking and Risk Management (2009) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Human Health
Objective:
This study will investigate the extent to which geocoded Vital Statistics Natality data collected from birth certificates can be used to assess the impact of environmental hazards. These records cover millions of births (in fact all births) over long periods of time. They include information about maternal background and birth outcomes as well as information about the precise residential location of mothers. Moreover, birth records can be linked to infant death records to yield large samples of infant deaths. Given residential addresses, it is possible to link mothers to information about nearby environmental hazards. It also is possible to link births to the same mother, so that the effect of changes in potential exposure can be assessed. The hypothesis to be investigated is that these large and comprehensive data sets can shed useful light on the effects of environmental hazards. This work is being done to benefit the scientific community by demonstrating a way of linking several publicly available data sets to derive a measure of environmental public health impacts.
Progress Summary:
The main accomplishment during the grant period has been to draft a paper entitled: “Are Industrial Plants Good Neighbors? Evidence from 4,000 Plant Openings and Closings,” which is almost ready to be submitted for publication. The abstract for the paper follows:
Industrial plants can be good for business but also impose costs in the form of increased traffic, noise, and pollution. There has been little monitoring of the health effects of toxic plant releases, and both the distance traveled by pollutants and their health effects are largely unknown. We assemble data with the latitude and longitude of mothers, houses, and plants and use the dates of roughly 4,000 plant openings and closings to estimate the effect of industrial plants on ambient air pollution, housing prices, and infant health. We find that toxic emissions are detectable within 1 mile of an operating plant. Housing values within 1 mile decrease by 2 percent when plants open, and increase by 2 percent when plants close. The incidence of low birth weight within 1 mile increases by 1.4 percent when plants open, and decreases by a similar amount when plants close.
I also have begun two additional projects exploring the feasibility of using Vital Statistics Natality data to measure environmental health impacts. The first will examine the impact of pollution from the 9/11 attack on infant health outcomes and use of special education services. Several previous studies have produced inconclusive results regarding the impact of the dust cloud on outcomes such as prematurity and low birth weight, and none has used longitudinal data following up on the affected infants. Some of the difficulties involved in identifying the effects of the cloud include the fact that women in the affected areas may be different than women in other areas; the fact that women in the affected cohort were affected by severe stress as well as by the cloud; and the general lack of longitudinal data following children from birth to older ages. The current research uses Vital Statistics Natality data for New York City, which has been linked to information about the children’s use of special education services. Strengths of the research design include: the ability to compare affected infants to their own siblings to control for differences in the characteristics of exposed and unexposed sample of mothers; a focus on mothers residing in the affected area and nearby areas, so that arguably all women in the sample were exposed to stress due to 9/11 and differences should be mainly due to the effects of pollution; and the ability to follow up the affected infants to see whether they are disproportionately represented in the special education caseload. The data for this project have been assembled, and the analysis phase has begun.
The second project will examine the impact of oil and gas drilling in Pennsylvania on birth outcomes. Many of the residents of western Pennsylvania, where oil and gas drilling is concentrated, rely on private wells for drinking water. These wells are largely unregulated and untested by the state. Recent research suggests that wells within 1 kilometer of an active horizontal fracturing site may be contaminated by methane gas, which raises the possibility of other types of contamination (Osborn, et al., 2011). This project will compare births to women residing close to active drilling sites to those of women farther away, and will further compare women with well water to those using publicly monitored water systems. Assembling the data for this project is computation intensive, because it is necessary to measure mother’s distance to oil and gas wells and the boundaries of public drinking water districts.
Future Activities:
In the next year, I intend to submit the first paper discussed above for publication and complete the paper about air pollution following 9/11. I also will continue to assemble the data on oil and gas drilling and water quality and hope to begin the analysis of that project.
Journal Articles:
No journal articles submitted with this report: View all 13 publications for this projectSupplemental Keywords:
birth weight, low birth weight, Toxics Release Inventory, hazardous air pollutants, industrial activity, housing pricesProgress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractThe perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.