- Full citation and abstract?
- Lin, Shao, Jean Pierre Munsie, Syni-An Hwang, Edward Fitzgerald, and Michael R. Cayo. "Childhood Asthma Hospitalization and Residential Exposure to State Route Traffic."Environmental Research 88, no. 2 (February 2002): 73-81. Accessed September 26, 2015. doi:10.1006/enrs.2001.4303.
- “This study investigated whether pediatric hospitalization for asthma was related to living near a road with heavy traffic. In this case-control study, cases (N=417) consisted of white children aged 0-14 years who were admitted for asthma and who resided in Erie County, New York, excluding the city of Buffalo. Controls (N=461) were children in the same age range admitted during the same time period for non-respiratory diseases. Subjects' residential addresses were linked to traffic information provided by the New York State Department of Transportation. After adjustments for age and poverty level were made, children hospitalized for asthma were more likely to live on roads with the highest tertile of vehicle miles traveled (VMT) (odds ratio (OR): 1.93, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.13-3.29) within 200 m and were more likely to have trucks and trailers passing by within 200 m of their residence (OR=1.43, 95% CI: 1.03-1.99) compared to controls. However, childhood asthma hospitalization was not significantly associated with residential distance from state roads, annual VMT within 500 m, or whether trucks or trailers passed by within 500 m. This study suggests that exposure to high volumes of traffic/truck within 200 m of homes contributes to childhood asthma hospitalizations.”
- Where do the authors work, and what are their areas of expertise? Note any other publications by the authors with relevance to the 6Cities project.
- Dr. Shao Lin is a research associate professor at UAlbany’s School of Public Health. He has his PhD in Epidemiology from University of North Carolina. His primary area of specialization is environmental impacts on public health, especially air/water quality. He has written several papers on envirohealth impacts in NYS, most notably surrounding 9/11 and it’s impact on the health of people who were in the area. Even though most of his work (that I can find at least) is from the early 2000’s , his work could be a huge asset to the 6Cities project (especially NYC and Albany).
- Dr. Syni-An Hwang is the head of the Bureau of Environmental and Educational Epidemiology at the NYS DOH.
- Dr. Edward Fitzgerald is a Environmental Health professor at SUNY Albany. He has worked on several research papers with Dr. Shao Lin.
- Dr. Michael R. Cayo’s primary area of expertise is Geographic Research. He doesn’t have many other publications.
- What are the main findings or arguments presented in the article or report?
- That exposure to high amounts of vehicle traffic within 200 m of a person’s home can contribute to childhood asthma hospitalization.
- That there is not a significant difference between living <150m from a road and >150m from a road.
- That roads with a lot of trucks on them can contribute more than a lot of cars, because of extra diesel exhausts.
- Describe at least three ways that the argument is supported
- The argument is supported almost entirely through epidemiological work. The only thing collected “in the field” was the number of hospital visits by the children they were studying.
- What three (or more) quotes capture the message of the article or report?
- “The results of this study provide support for the hypothesis that exposure to automobile and truck exhaust within 200 m from homes contributes to childhood asthma hospitalization.”
- “Although these sociodemographic variables were not typical confounders in the current study, they were reported to be associated with both asthma hospitalizations and heavy traffic exposures in previous studies (Weiland et al., 1994; Edwards et al., 1994; Lin, 1999).”
- “However, this study did not find any significant impact of distance to major state routes alone, without consideration of traffic volume or heavy truck son asthma hospitalization.”
- What were the methods, tools and/or data used to produce the claims or arguments made in the article or report?
- A lot of the health data was collected from either the NYS Department of Health or the Statewide Planning and Research Cooperative System (SPARCS).
- The vehicular traffic data was obtained from the NYS Department of Transportation. The researchers also used Mapinfo to help make their maps (similar to GIS).
- The researchers started with around 3000 participants (children aged from 0-14) and then started to narrow down their subjects. They wanted to narrow down other variables, so all of the subjects were white and from Erie County (excluding Buffalo).
- The statistical methods that are a defining characteristic of epidemiology created various averages, percentiles, quadrants etc. regarding the data. Quite frankly, the amount of data manipulation involved in this paper (and most epidemiological papers in general) seem superficial.
- How (if at all) are health disparities or other equity issues addressed in the article or report?
- Unfortunately the study does not include any ethnicities other than Caucasian. The researchers readily admitted that race and economic status would play a huge role in their study, so they tried to limit that influence.
- Where has this article or report been referenced or discussed? (In some journals, you can see this in a sidebar.)
- Long- and short-term exposure to PM2.5 and mortality: using novel exposure models. Kloog I, Ridgway B, Koutrakis P, Coull BA, Schwartz JD.
- Residential exposure to motor vehicle emissions and the risk of wheezing among 7-8 year-old schoolchildren: a city-wide cross-sectional study in Nicosia, Cyprus. Middleton N, Yiallouros P, Nicolaou N, Kleanthous S, Pipis S, Zeniou M, Demokritou P, Koutrakis P.
- Residential traffic and children's respiratory health. Kim JJ, Huen K, Adams S, Smorodinsky S, Hoats A, Malig B, Lipsett M, Ostro B.
- Can you learn anything from the article or report’s bibliography that tells us something about how the article or report was produced?
- Almost all of the sources cited in the bibliography are either studies on how truck/car traffic can affect humans’ health or how city living can affect humans’ health. This makes me think that the article was produced in the hopes of shedding light on a diverse and dangerous issue.
- t also seems to be very unoriginal. It’s just a different location compared to some other studies cited in the paper.
- What three points, details or references from the text did you follow up on to advance your understanding of how air pollution science has been produced and used in governance and education in different settings?
- Because this report was made in 2000, there have been over 15 years of technological advancements that could make this research data obsolete. One thing I was curious about was if diesel engines, common in most trucks, have become any cleaner since this research was conducted.
- What I did find was that Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel (ULSD) only became really popular in the mid 2000’s. This switch in fuel significantly decreased the amount of sulfur (and subsequently sulfur dioxide) that was being emitted into the air. Of course it wouldn’t matter if the amount of sulfur being emitted decreased if truck traffic increased significantly in that time frame.
Loading...