Urban Land-Use and Infants' Respiratory Symptoms

• Activity Number: 422
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Tuesday, August 2, 2011 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Keita Ebisu*+ and Theodore R. Holford and Kathleen D. Belanger and Brian P. Leaderer and Michelle L. Bell
• Companies: Yale University and Yale University and Yale University and Yale University and Yale University
• Keywords: Wheeze Symptom ; Land-use ; Infants' health ; Traffic ; Urbanicity

Abstract

The relationship between urban land-use and health is not fully understood. We investigated whether urbanicity near residence is associated with infant's respiratory symptoms. Wheeze occurrence was recorded for first year of life for 680 infants in Connecticut ,1996-1998. The fraction of urban land-use near a subject's home, assessed through satellite imagery, was related to severity of wheeze symptoms using ordered logistic regression, adjusting for individual variables (e.g., race). NO2 exposure, as a proxy for traffic pollutants, was estimated using integrated traffic exposure modeling. A 10% increase in urban land-use within a 1,540m buffer of each infant's residence was associated with a 1.09-fold increased risk of severe wheeze (95% C.I., 1.02-1.16). When NO2, representing traffic pollution, was added to the model, results for urban land-use are no longer statistically significant, but have a similar central estimate. Findings indicate that urban land-use is associated with respiratory symptoms in infants, and that health effect estimates for urbanicity incorporate some effect of traffic-related emissions, but also involve other factors.