An Evaluation of the British Columbia Asthma Monitoring System (BCAMS) and PM 2.5 Exposure Metrics during the 2014 Forest Fire Season

Kathleen E. McLean, Jiayun Yao and Sarah B. Henderson
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Kathleen E. McLean: Environmental Health Services, British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, 655 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5Z 4R4, Canada
Jiayun Yao: Environmental Health Services, British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, 655 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5Z 4R4, Canada
Sarah B. Henderson: Environmental Health Services, British Columbia Centre for Disease Control, 655 West 12th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5Z 4R4, Canada

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 6, 1-15

Abstract: The British Columbia Asthma Monitoring System (BCAMS) tracks forest fire smoke exposure and asthma-related health outcomes, identifying excursions beyond expected daily counts. Weekly reports during the wildfire season support public health and emergency management decision-making. We evaluated BCAMS by identifying excursions for asthma-related physician visits and dispensations of the reliever medication salbutamol sulfate and examining their corresponding smoke exposures. A disease outbreak detection algorithm identified excursions from 1 July to 31 August 2014. Measured, modeled, and forecasted concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) were used to assess exposure. We assigned PM 2.5 levels to excursions by choosing the highest value within a seven day window centred on the excursion day. Smoky days were defined as those with PM 2.5 levels ? 25 µg/m 3 . Most excursions (57%–71%) were assigned measured or modeled PM 2.5 concentrations of 10 µg/m 3 or higher. Of the smoky days, 55.8% and 69.8% were associated with at least one excursion for physician visits and salbutamol dispensations, respectively. BCAMS alerted most often when measures of smoke exposure were relatively high. Better performance might be realized by combining asthma-related outcome metrics in a bivariate model.

Keywords: forest fire smoke; particulate matter; environmental exposure; asthma; public health surveillance; evaluation studies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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