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Method to Select Metropolitan Areas of Epidemiologic Interest for Enhanced Air Quality Monitoring
Citation:
Baxter, L., S. Teet, AND L. Neas. Method to Select Metropolitan Areas of Epidemiologic Interest for Enhanced Air Quality Monitoring. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R/12/518 (NTIS PB2012-112322), 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory′s (NERL′s) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA′s mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD′s research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA′s strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s current Speciation Trends Network (STN) covers most major U.S. metropolitan areas and a wide range of particulate matter (PM) constituents and gaseous co-pollutants. However, using filter-based methods, most PM constituents are measured not daily and the lack of daily air quality data complicates epidemiologic analyses of the potential adverse health effects of these PM constituents.Possible criteria for the identification of metropolitan areas with the greatest epidemiologic value for enhanced monitoring are population, mean levels and variation of criteria air pollutants and PM constituents, correlations among these pollutants, and the relationship of these correlations to the coefficient of variation. Using a review of air quality measurements from 49 STN monitors for 2001-2005 as an illustration of this criteria, we selected metropolitan areas that had the appropriate population size, sufficient PM2.5 concentration levels, variability for most pollutants, and appropriate correlations between pollutants. Once these criteria had been met, the geographical distribution of the selected cities was further examined. Due to an over-representation on Northeastern cities and an under-representation of Western cities, the final list was adjusted to include western sites. Thus, as an example the list of candidate metropolitan areas of greatest epidemiologic interest for enhanced air quality monitoring are; Sacramento, CA San Diego, CA Atlanta, GA Baltimore, MD Boston, MA Newark, NJ Cleveland, OH Pittsburgh, PA Providence, RI Salt Lake City, UT Milwaukee, WI Using the presented methodology daily monitoring of the widest range of particulate matter (PM) constituents and gaseous co-pollutants at these locations would be of great advantage for future epidemiologic time series studies.
URLs/Downloads:
STN REPORT - MAIN BODY FINAL.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 9638 KB, about PDF)STN REPORT - APPENDIX A FOR FINAL.PDF (PDF, NA pp, 190 KB, about PDF)