Evaluation of health effects of air pollution in the Chestnut Ridge area
This project involves several tasks designed to take advantage of a very extensive air pollution monitoring system that is operating in the Chestnut Ridge region of Western Pennsylvania and the very well developed analytic dispersion models that have been previously fine-tuned to this particular area. The major task in this project is to establish, through several distinct epidemiologic approaches, health data to be used to test hypotheses about relations of air pollution exposures to morbidity and mortality rates in this region. This project affords a cost-effective opportunity for state-of-the-art techniques to be used in both costly areas of air pollution and health effects data collection. The closely spaced network of monitors, plus the dispersion modeling capabilities, allow for the investigation of health impacts of various pollutant gradients in neighboring geographic areas, thus minimizing the confounding effects of social, ethnic, and economic factors. The pollutants that are monitored in this network include total gaseous sulfur, sulfates, total suspended particulates, NOx, NO, ozone/oxidants, and coefficient of haze. In addition to enabling the simulation of exposure profiles between monitors, the air quality modeling, along with extensive source and background inventories, will allow for upgrading the quality of the monitored data as well as simulating the exposure levels for about 25 additional air pollutants. Another important goal of this project is to collect and test the many available models for associating health effects with air pollution, to determine their predictive validity and their usefulness in the choice and siting of future energy facilities.
- Research Organization:
- Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AS02-78EV04968
- OSTI ID:
- 5242859
- Report Number(s):
- DOE/EV/04968-T1
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
AIR POLLUTION
BIOLOGICAL EFFECTS
AEROSOLS
AIR QUALITY
DATA COMPILATION
DISEASES
GRAPHS
HUMAN POPULATIONS
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MORTALITY
NITROGEN OXIDES
OZONE
PENNSYLVANIA
PHOTOCHEMICAL OXIDANTS
RECOMMENDATIONS
RESEARCH PROGRAMS
SULFATES
SULFUR
TABLES
CENTRAL REGION
CHALCOGENIDES
COLLOIDS
DATA
DATA FORMS
DISPERSIONS
ELEMENTS
ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
INFORMATION
NITROGEN COMPOUNDS
NONMETALS
NORTH AMERICA
NUMERICAL DATA
OXIDES
OXYGEN COMPOUNDS
POLLUTION
POPULATIONS
SOLS
SULFUR COMPOUNDS
USA
560306* - Chemicals Metabolism & Toxicology- Man- (-1987)
500200 - Environment
Atmospheric- Chemicals Monitoring & Transport- (-1989)