Investigating Links between Asthma Rates, Purple Air Network Air Quality Data and Soil Toxic Heavy Metal Distributions

Keywords: Air Pollution, soil, heavy metals, dust, mine
Abstract Type: Poster Abstract

Abstract

There are links between asthma and mining activities in Utah. Bingham Copper Mine, releases toxic heavy metals into the environment. Dust produced by mines and dry soils tends to be PM10 size. These particles travel shorter distances and go less deeply into the lungs than PM2.5 particles, but may contain heavy metals from mining activities. Soils throughout the western Salt Lake valley are contaminated with heavy metal levels greater than WHO standards. There has been much construction in this area recently generating much dust. The EPA has seventeen PM2.5 and seven PM10 monitoring stations within Utah which are used with weather data to model PM2.5 with the EPA downscaler model. PM10 levels are not given as much attention. This research compares using larger numbers of inexpensive, less accurate data (Purple Air Network) with minimal, expensive and accurate data (EPA network). Daily minimum, mean, median and maximum PM2.5 and PM10 levels were extracted from all outdoor Purple Air Network stations for 7 years. Data were converted to z-scores and the proportion of observations with z-scores >1 (highest 15% of observations) was calculated and mapped to a 250 m grid. Indicators of whether daily WHO PM2.5 and PM10 thresholds were exceeded were also calculated and mapped. The mapped data from the purple air network, mapped soil heavy metals and census tract PM2.5 data (n=588) were aggregated to Utah small areas (n=99) to correlate and do bivariate Local Moran’s I cluster analysis with Adult Asthma Prevalence, Asthma ER visits and Asthma Hospitalization rates.