The Salton Sea and Children's Health: Assessing Imperial Valley Respiratory Health and the Environment

项目总结 露天焚烧农田以清除收获后留下的作物残留物仍然是一种常见的农业 在全球范围内，这是一种未得到充分认识的空气污染暴露来源。在全球范围内，农业燃烧是 广泛存在，燃烧的生物质几乎是野火的一半。在整个美国大陆， 据估计，每年农业焚烧面积约为300万至580万英亩，约1550万英亩 美国境内的人受到农作物焚烧和相关烟雾暴露的影响。虽然之前的研究已经 已确定的野火事件和家庭生物质燃烧对健康的不利影响，缺乏 关于农业焚烧对美国人口健康的具体影响的研究，尽管有证据表明这是一种 与释放有毒空气污染物相关的普遍做法。作为我们目前在帝国郡工作的一部分， 我们一直专注于了解空气质量和当地颗粒物(PM)来源之间的联系。 暴露于儿童的呼吸系统健康。我们建立了《帝国谷呼吸系统健康评估》 和环境(AIRE)队列(MPI Farzan/Johnston 1R01ES029598)，550名学龄儿童 反复进行呼吸道健康评估。AIRE研究的总体目标是发展一个社区- 建立学术合作伙伴关系，确定儿童暴露在风吹来的PM中对健康的影响，并告知公众 帝国谷的卫生行动。为回应社会日益关注的问题，探讨 对于这些地区复杂的空气污染混合物，我们建议整合农业燃烧的暴露指标 在帝国谷，我们在艾尔研究中对儿童的呼吸健康进行了评估。使用一个新的社区 监测网络和基于过滤器的PM监测一起，我们将估计日常农业的贡献 燃烧活动到PM浓度。这一暴露数据将被用于更大的流行病学研究，以 评估农业烧伤与儿童呼吸道健康症状之间的联系。我们的研究旨在 1)通过表征儿童PM暴露的空间和时间变化来量化儿童PM暴露 AIRE社区2008-2021年的农业燃烧，通过检查农业和 利用现有的基于社区的焚烧记录和环境PM浓度和成分 建立空气监测网络，并利用农业焚烧的特征开发来源分配模型； 2)评估农业烧伤与儿童呼吸道健康的关系 接触农业焚烧与哮喘的发生和加重、呼吸道症状有关 和肺功能在已建立的小学年龄组队列中。拟议的工作将包括 可能影响空气质量和儿童健康的农业燃烧暴露，使我们能够更充分地 区分当地PM来源并增强帝国谷社区解决 空气污染对环境和公众健康的影响。

PROJECT SUMMARY Open burning of agricultural fields to remove crop residue left after harvesting remains a common agricultural practice and an underappreciated source of air pollution exposure worldwide. Globally, agricultural burning is widespread and accounts for nearly half as much biomass burned as wildfires. Across the continental US, agricultural burning amounts to an estimated ~3-5.8 million acres burned annually and approximately 15.5 million people within the US are affected by crop burning and related smoke exposures. While prior research has identified adverse health impacts from wildfire events and domestic biomass burning, there is a paucity of research on the specific impact of agricultural burning on health in US populations, despite evidence that it is a widespread practice associated with release of toxic air pollutants. As part of our current work in Imperial County, we have focused on understanding the links between air quality and local sources of particulate matter (PM) exposure with children’s respiratory health. We established the “Assessing Imperial Valley Respiratory Health and the Environment (AIRE) cohort (MPI Farzan/Johnston 1R01ES029598), a cohort of 550 school-age children with repeated respiratory health assessments. The overall goal of the AIRE study is to develop a community- academic partnership to determine the health effects of childhood exposures to wind-blown PM and inform public health action in the Imperial Valley. In response to growing community concerns to explore the impacts of complex air pollution mixtures in the regions, we propose to integrate exposure metrics on agricultural burning in Imperial Valley into our assessment of children’s respiratory health in the AIRE study. Using a novel community monitoring network together with filter-based PM monitoring, we will estimate contributions of daily agricultural burn activity to PM concentrations. This exposure data will be leveraged in the larger epidemiological study to assess the association between agricultural burning and children’s respiratory health symptoms. Our study aims to: 1) Quantify children’s PM exposures through the characterization of spatial and temporal variations in agricultural burning in AIRE communities from 2008-2021, by examining the relationship between agricultural burning records with ambient PM concentrations and composition by leveraging an existing community-based air monitoring network and by developing a source-apportionment model using hallmarks of agricultural burning; and 2) Assess the relationship between agricultural burning and children’s respiratory health to exposure whether exposure to agricultural burning is associated with asthma incidence and exacerbations, respiratory symptoms and lung function in the established elementary school-aged AIRE cohort. The proposed work will incorporate agricultural burning exposures that may impact air quality and children’s health, allowing us to more fully discriminate between local PM sources and enhancing the capacity of the Imperial Valley community to address the environmental and public health impacts due to air pollution.