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

项目摘要 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生产方式。 实践和一个未被充分认识的空气污染暴露源。在全球范围内，农业燃烧是 这是一个广泛的，占近一半的生物质燃烧野火。在美国大陆， 据估计，农业燃烧每年约有300 - 580万英亩， 在美国，人们受到作物燃烧和相关烟雾暴露的影响。虽然先前的研究 森林大火和家庭生物质燃烧对健康的不利影响， 关于农业燃烧对美国人口健康的具体影响的研究，尽管有证据表明， 与释放有毒空气污染物有关的普遍做法。作为我们目前在帝国郡工作的一部分， 我们一直致力于了解空气质量与当地颗粒物来源之间的联系 影响儿童的呼吸道健康。我们建立了“评估帝王谷呼吸系统健康 和环境（AIRE）队列（MPI Farzan/约翰斯顿1 R 01 ES 029598），一个550名学龄儿童的队列 反复进行呼吸系统健康评估AIRE研究的总体目标是建立一个社区- 学术伙伴关系，以确定儿童暴露于风吹PM的健康影响，并告知公众 帝王谷的健康行动为回应社会日益关注的问题，探讨 复杂的空气污染混合物的地区，我们建议整合暴露指标农业燃烧 在我们的AIRE研究中对儿童呼吸系统健康的评估中，使用一个新的社区 监测网络以及基于过滤器的PM监测，我们将估计每日农业 燃烧活性对PM浓度的影响。该暴露数据将在更大规模的流行病学研究中得到利用， 评估农业焚烧与儿童呼吸道健康症状之间的关联。我们的研究旨在 1）通过描述儿童PM暴露的空间和时间变化来量化儿童PM暴露。 2008-2021年AIRE社区的农业燃烧，通过研究农业 利用现有的基于社区的 空气监测网络，并利用农业燃烧的特点开发一个来源分配模型; 和2）评估农业燃烧与儿童呼吸系统健康之间的关系， 暴露于农业燃烧与哮喘的发病率和恶化，呼吸道症状， 和肺功能。拟议的工作将包括 农业燃烧暴露可能影响空气质量和儿童健康，使我们能够更充分地 区分当地PM来源和提高帝王谷社区解决 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.