Putting Co-Exposures on Equal Footing: An Ecological Analysis of Same-Scale Measures of Air Pollution and Social Factors on Cardiovascular Disease in New York City

Jamie L. Humphrey, Colleen E. Reid, Ellen J. Kinnee, Laura D. Kubzansky, Lucy F. Robinson and Jane E. Clougherty
Additional contact information
Jamie L. Humphrey: Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Colleen E. Reid: Geography Department, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO 80309, USA
Ellen J. Kinnee: University Center for Social and Urban Research, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, USA
Laura D. Kubzansky: Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Lucy F. Robinson: Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA
Jane E. Clougherty: Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Dornsife School of Public Health, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 23, 1-19

Abstract: Epidemiologic evidence consistently links urban air pollution exposures to health, even after adjustment for potential spatial confounding by socioeconomic position (SEP), given concerns that air pollution sources may be clustered in and around lower-SEP communities. SEP, however, is often measured with less spatial and temporal resolution than are air pollution exposures (i.e., census-tract socio-demographics vs. fine-scale spatio-temporal air pollution models). Although many questions remain regarding the most appropriate, meaningful scales for the measurement and evaluation of each type of exposure, we aimed to compare associations for multiple air pollutants and social factors against cardiovascular disease (CVD) event rates, with each exposure measured at equal spatial and temporal resolution. We found that, in multivariable census-tract-level models including both types of exposures, most pollutant–CVD associations were non-significant, while most social factors retained significance. Similarly, the magnitude of association was higher for an IQR-range difference in the social factors than in pollutant concentrations. We found that when offered equal spatial and temporal resolution, CVD was more strongly associated with social factors than with air pollutant exposures in census-tract-level analyses in New York City.

Keywords: spatial scale; social factors; socioeconomic position; urban air pollution; cardiovascular disease (CVD) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/23/4621/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/23/4621/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:16:y:2019:i:23:p:4621-:d:289271

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().