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Identification of Vulnerable Communities with High Lead Exposures Residing in Michigan
Citation:
Xue, J., V. Zartarian, A. Poulakos, AND L. Stanek. Identification of Vulnerable Communities with High Lead Exposures Residing in Michigan. 2018 ISES-ISEE, Ottawa, CANADA, August 26 - 30, 2018.
Impact/Purpose:
Presented a 2018 ISES-ISEE
Description:
Lead exposure is associated with a variety of harmful effects in both children and adults, including adverse neurological, cardiovascular, kidney, developmental, and reproductive outcomes. Scientific evidence indicates that exposure to even small amounts of lead can be harmful to a child’s developing brain, resulting in detrimental effects on intelligence and behavior. Over the past 50 years, lead exposure for the general United States population has decreased, as demonstrated by lowered blood lead levels. However, there are still many vulnerable communities (i.e., those overburdened with few resources and disproportionately impacted by lead exposures) where lead exposure is a serious issue, as seen by the public health crises in Flint, Michigan and East Chicago, Illinois and Indiana. A large dataset of ~2.5 million data points, consisting of mostly young children (average age ~7 years old) and over 10 years of blood lead measurements for people living in the state of Michigan, was obtained. Each individual blood lead measurement was geocoded to determine if neighborhood clusters existed where there could be vulnerable communities with high lead exposures. The number of people with high blood lead levels (e.g., 3.5 or 5 µg/dl) weighted by population or total number of people for blood lead screening were used for the analysis ([Getis-Ord Gi*] and Gluster and outlier analysis [Anselin Local Morans I] in ARCMAP 10.3.1) to identify communities with high blood lead levels (hot spots), focusing on vulnerable communities. House age, environmental justice indices (a combination of environmental and demographic information), census data, major roads with traffic information, and other variables, together with lead concentrations in air, soil, dust, and drinking water, were analyzed along with the blood lead data. Statistical and geospatial analyses were performed to identify the major exposure pathways and factors for informing risk mitigation/prevention efforts focused on vulnerable communities with high lead exposures in Michigan. Preliminary results showed high cluster census tracts with high percent of blood lead concentrations which are related to lead concentrations in soil and dust, house age, environmental justice indices and other factors. Those findings are important to target high vulnerable communities to reduce risk of lead exposure.
