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. 2015 Apr 27;9(Suppl 1):27-33.
doi: 10.4137/EHI.S15665. eCollection 2015.

Aerosol optical depth as a measure of particulate exposure using imputed censored data, and relationship with childhood asthma hospital admissions for 2004 in athens, Greece

Gary Higgs  1 , David A Sterling  2 , Subhash Aryal  3 , Abhilash Vemulapalli  3 , Kostas N Priftis  4 , Nicolas I Sifakis  5
Affiliations

Aerosol optical depth as a measure of particulate exposure using imputed censored data, and relationship with childhood asthma hospital admissions for 2004 in athens, Greece

Gary Higgs et al. Environ Health Insights. .

Abstract

An understanding of human health implications from atmosphere exposure is a priority in both the geographic and the public health domains. The unique properties of geographic tools for remote sensing of the atmosphere offer a distinct ability to characterize and model aerosols in the urban atmosphere for evaluation of impacts on health. Asthma, as a manifestation of upper respiratory disease prevalence, is a good example of the potential interface of geographic and public health interests. The current study focused on Athens, Greece during the year of 2004 and (1) demonstrates a systemized process for aligning data obtained from satellite aerosol optical depth (AOD) with geographic location and time, (2) evaluates the ability to apply imputation methods to censored data, and (3) explores whether AOD data can be used satisfactorily to investigate the association between AOD and health impacts using an example of hospital admission for childhood asthma. This work demonstrates the ability to apply remote sensing data in the evaluation of health outcomes, that the alignment process for remote sensing data is readily feasible, and that missing data can be imputed with a sufficient degree of reliability to develop complete datasets. Individual variables demonstrated small but significant effect levels on hospital admission of children for AOD, nitrogen oxides (NOx), relative humidity (rH), temperature, smoke, and inversely for ozone. However, when applying a multivari-able model, an association with asthma hospital admissions and air quality could not be demonstrated. This work is promising and will be expanded to include additional years.

Keywords: AOD; Aerosol optical depth; childhood asthma; particulate exposure.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
The left image shows a satellite image of Athens with a superimposed major road network and an atmospheric cube as references for the air mass over the Athens basin. The right image illustrates the topography of the basin, urban land cover, and the Department of Air Quality of the Hellenic Ministry of Environment, Energy and Climate Change’s air monitoring stations.
Figure 2
Figure 2
A representation of the land and water contrast of the Athens basin and a bowl ringed by mountains and opened to the southwest. Superimposed on this is the outline of the urban built-up area of city in yellow and the regional arterial transportation system in red. The pink polygons represent MODIS pixels on day 32 of 2004, and the label 56 on the polygon over Athens is the AOD value for that particular air mass. Using the corrected AOD values, this reading would be 0.0056.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The number of hospital admissions by day of the year because of asthma in Athens, Greece in 2004.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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