Effect of housing factors and surficial uranium on the spatial prediction of residential radon in Iowa

Details

• Personal Author:
  Field RW ; Smith BJ
• Description:
  Growing epidemiologic evidence suggests that residential radon is an important risk factor for lung cancer. Consequently, public health professionals have expressed interest in characterizing the spatial distribution of radon concentrations in order to identify geographic regions of high exposure. Ambient radon concentrations are a function of geologic features including soil radium content. Indoor radon concentrations can vary based on building characteristics that affect the entry of radon into the building and movement between rooms therein. We present a geostatistical hierarchical Bayesian model for radon that allows for spatial prediction based on geologic data and housing characteristics. Our model is applied to radon data from an epidemiologic study in Iowa that consist of 136 outdoor measurements and 2590 indoor measurements from 614 residential homes. Housing characteristics collected in the Iowa Study are included as predictors in the model. Geologic data in the form of county-average surficial uranium concentrations from the USGS National Uranium Resource Evaluation project are also considered. A 'change of support' approach is implemented to combine the radon measurements, collected at points in space, and the uranium concentrations, averaged over counties, so that point-source concentrations for the latter are available for the analysis. Estimates of the effect of select housing factors on radon are provided along with spatial maps of predicted radon concentrations in Iowa. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Environmental Exposure Lung Lung Diseases Neoplasms Occupational Health Respiratory System Respiratory Tract Diseases Risk Assessment Risk Factors Safety
• Keywords:
  Author Keywords: Environmental Exposure Cancer Environmental-exposure Exposure-levels Exposure-limits Hierarchical Bayesian Model Lung-cancer Lung-disease Markov Chain Monte Carlo Simulation Models Pulmonary-cancer Pulmonary-disorders Pulmonary-function Pulmonary-system Pulmonary-system-disorders Radon Gas Risk-factors Spatial-perception Spatial Statistics Uranium

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• ISSN:
  1180-4009
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  Iowa ; OSHA Region 7
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  481-497
• Volume:
  18
• Issue:
  5
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20040682
• Citation:
  Environmetrics 2007 Aug; 18(5):481-497
• Contact Point Address:
  Brian J. Smith, Department of Biostatistics, 200 Hawkins Drive, C22 GH, The University of Iowa, IowaCity, Iowa 52242-1009
• Email:
  brian-j-smith@uiowa.edu
• CAS Registry Number:
  Radium (CAS RN 7440-14-4) ; Radon (CAS RN 10043-92-2) ; Uranium (CAS RN 7440-61-1)
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2007
• Performing Organization:
  University of Iowa
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  Environmetrics
• End Date:
  20290630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:9cbcfc2a99e17c787f3fa723144d572505f8b2889709dc5d8ba8fff8d125f866d1f4e7af57316710b4eb466b779edd9036b5fd1fd5f2fc1c3e9a24f6b93aa2f5
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/193470/cdc_193470_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 615.68 KB ]