Geography-Based Exposure Assessment for Urban Metals

虽然铅是一种自然存在的元素，存在于环境的许多地方，但人类活动显著增加了许多地区的铅水平，特别是城市地区的老城区。虽然通常情况下，铅占地壳的0.002%，但在城市，土壤中的铅含量可能是地壳的5到25倍。铅含量的增加转化为城市居民，特别是儿童对铅污染的暴露显著增加。美国人口的平均本底铅水平为每分升2.8微克，但在许多城市，相当多的儿童基线血铅水平超过每分升10微克。这一研究项目将为探索儿童铅中毒的空间维度开发新的方法。一个多学科的调查小组将研究城市环境污染物之间的空间关系，它们在土壤和粉尘中的来源生物地球化学过程，以及与人类接触它们相关的潜在不利公共卫生风险。该项目的一个主要目标是定量评估与接触土壤和受到重金属污染的室内家庭粉尘有关的社区健康风险。第二个主要目标是确定通过使用非侵入性生态技术进行此类评估的可行性。为了实现这些目标，调查人员将为纽约州锡拉丘兹开发一个基于地理的铅暴露评估模型。该模型的输入将是血铅监测结果、人口和住房普查数据、土壤和粉尘的重金属测量以及其他地理参考数据。这项研究将对空间分析文献做出一些贡献。例如，它将把小区域估计技术扩展到嵌套情况，并在有效样本大小和样本统计的准确性/精确度之间建立一条权衡曲线。它将提高对铅扩散地理维度的理解，并将测试监测污染的新方法。该项目还将对公共卫生领域产生重大的政策影响。特别是，它将为城市环境提供一个广泛适用、成本效益高的儿童铅中毒评估工具；它将促进一个地理上明确的解释框架，用于评估干预措施；它将有助于改进EPA暴露建模能力。

Although lead is a naturally occurring element present in many parts of the environment, human activities have dramatically increased lead levels in many locales, especially older parts of urban areas. Whereas lead normally constitutes about 0.002 percent of the Earth's crust, in cities, soil lead levels can be from five to 25 times as great. The heightened presence of lead translates into significantly increased exposure to lead contamination among urban residents, especially children. The average background lead level of the U.S. population is 2.8 micrograms per deciliter, but in many cities, substantial numbers of children have baseline blood lead levels in excess of 10 micrograms per deciliter. This research project will develop new methods for exploring spatial dimensions of pediatric lead poisoning. A multidisciplinary investigative team will study spatial relationships among urban environmental contaminants, the biogeochemical processes of their origin in soils and dust, and the potential for adverse public health risks associated with human exposure to them. A primary goal of this project is to quantitatively assess the community health risks associated with exposure to soils and interior household dusts that have been contaminated by heavy metals. A second major goal is to determine the feasibility of carrying out such assessments through the use of non-intrusive, ecological techniques. To accomplish these goals, the investigators will develop a geography-based lead-exposure assessment model for Syracuse, New York. Inputs to this model will be the blood lead monitoring results, population and housing census data, heavy-metal measurements for soils and dust, and other georeferenced data.This research will make a number of contributions to the spatial analysis literature. For example, it will extend small area estimation techniques to a nesting situation and establish a trade-off curve between effective sample size and accuracy/precision of sample statistics. It will improve understanding of geographic dimensions of lead dispersal, and it will test new approaches for monitoring contamination. This project also will have a significant policy impacts for the public health arena. In particular, it will provide a widely applicable, cost-effective, childhood lead poisoning assessment tool for urban environments; it will foster a geographically explicit interpretive framework for evaluating intervention measures; and it will help contribute to improvements in EPA exposure modeling capabilities.