Air Pollution Sources and Childhood Asthma Attacks in Catano, Puerto Rico.
From: Office of Surveillance and Biometrics, Center for Devices and Radiological Health, Food and Drug Administration, US Department of Health and Human Services, Rockville, MD, USA. nilsa.loyo-berrios@fda.hhs.gov
American journal of epidemiology
- Publish Date: Apr 2007
- ISSN: 0002-9262
- Volume: 165
- Issue: 8
- Pages: 927-35
- Medium: Print
- Language: English
- Citation (JAMA): Loyo-Berríos Nilsa I, Irizarry Rafael, Hennessey Joseph G, et al. Air Pollution Sources and Childhood Asthma Attacks in Catano, Puerto Rico.. Am. J. Epidemiol. Apr 2007;165:927-35
Abstract
Asthma prevalence in the Cataño Air Basin of Puerto Rico is 27% for children aged 13-14 years and 45% for children aged 5-6 years. There is concern that these rates are related to air pollution. The authors conducted a nested case-control study to evaluate whether proximity to air pollution point sources was associated with increased risk of asthma attacks. For 1997-2001, 1,382 asthma-related medical visits (International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, codes 493 and 493.9) in children under 17 were identified through health insurance claims. Controls were children with no asthma attacks who were randomly selected from enrollees in two health insurance companies by incidence density sampling (1:5) and matched to cases on gender, age, insurance company, and event date. The distance from a point source to the subject’s residence area represented a surrogate exposure measurement. Odds ratios for a 1-km decrease in distance were obtained by conditional logistic regression. Risk of asthma attack was associated with residing near a grain mill (odds ratio (OR) = 1.35), petroleum refinery (OR = 1.44), asphalt plant (OR = 1.23), or power plant (OR = 1.28) (all p’s < 0.05). Residence near major air emissions sources (>100 tons/year) increased asthma attack risk by 108% (p < 0.05). These results showed that proximity to some air pollution sources is associated with increased risks of asthma attacks.
Mesh Headings (Keywords): Adolescent, Air Pollution, Asthma, Child, Humans, Multivariate Analysis, Puerto Rico, Risk Factors
Check for Full Text / PubMed Unique Identifier (PMID): 17308332
This abstract is part of PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. PubMed includes more than 17 million citations from MEDLINE and other life science journals for biomedical articles. See Copyright and Disclaimers.
Linked medical terms appearing on this page are added by Healia to help readers find more information and are not part of the original PubMed document.
The data herein was last updated on July 8th, 2008 and may not reflect the most current and accurate data available from NLM.