Also discussed here: Development of Neighborhoods to Measure Spatial Indicators of Health (255 page pdf, Marie-Pierre Parenteau, Michael Sawada, Elizabeth A. Kristjansson, Melissa Calhoun, Stephanie Leclair, Ronald Labonté, Vivien Runnels, Anne Musiol, and Sam Herold, Volume 20 • No. 2 • 2008, Journal of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association, pp 43-55, Jul. 1, 2008)
The focus today is an assessment of whether “where one lives impacts one’s health“ holds true at the “inter-urban” scale for 90 neighbourhoods (defined using a number of social indicators) in Ottawa, Canada’s 4th largest city. While no statistical association was found between spatial variations of NO2 and community health, despite the established general link in the literature for individuals between pollution and health i.e. the health of an individual is determined by much more than the air pollution near their residence. Ottawa is surrounded by a “greenbelt” (shown as a low pollution yellow on the figure below) which is also close to most of residential Ottawa, while the downtown core, where most people work and fewer live, has many pollution hotspots. As the author points out, exposure and mobility need to be considered when assessing health impacts.
Key Quotes:
“Transportation is the main contributor to air pollution in Ottawa: > 50% of O3 at ground level, 90% of CO, > 85% of NOx and approximately 60% of SO2 measured are caused by transportation activities”
“The areas with the highest NO2 concentrations on the LUR surface are for the most part associated to the location of small industrial parks.. Another important element .. is the large linear area characterized by lower NO2 concentrations that surrounds the urban core of the city…. the greenbelt”
“The use of three different spatial representations confirms there is no measurable effect of NO2 exposure in Ottawa…the lack of a relationship between exposure to NO2 and respiratory morbidity may have been the result of inexact correspondence between the neighbourhood boundaries and the ecological properties that shape health processes…
“Much of the published work on the relationship between NO2 exposure and health has focused on the differences between metropolitan centers, herein referred to as inter-urban differences. As such, at the opposite end, there is a poor understanding of the role that variations in NO2 have on health across a given metropolitan area, herein referred to as intra-urban scale”
“This research demonstrates the necessity of addressing scale more strategically in health research as it can have an effect on the representation of exposure, susceptibility and consequently on the assessment of the relationship between exposure and health”
“an effort should be made to include daily mobility into the estimate of exposure to NO2”
Related articles
- Exposure to Air Pollution and Heart Attacks (pollutionfree.wordpress.com)
- Cities of World Ranked by Exposure to Particulates (pollutionfree.wordpress.com)
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