Estimating the Acute Health Impacts of Fire-Originated PM2.5 Exposure During the 2017 California Wildfires: Sensitivity to Choices of Inputs

Details

• Personal Author:
  Cleland SE ; Rappold AG ; Serre ML ; West JJ
• Description:
  Exposure to wildfire smoke increases the risk of respiratory and cardiovascular hospital admissions. Health impact assessments, used to inform decision-making processes, characterize the health impacts of environmental exposures by combining preexisting epidemiological concentration-response functions (CRFs) with estimates of exposure. These two key inputs influence the magnitude and uncertainty of the health impacts estimated, but for wildfire-related impact assessments the extent of their impact is largely unknown. We first estimated the number of respiratory, cardiovascular, and asthma hospital admissions attributable to fire-originated PM2.5 exposure in central California during the October 2017 wildfires, using Monte Carlo simulations to quantify uncertainty with respect to the exposure and epidemiological inputs. We next conducted sensitivity analyses, comparing four estimates of fire-originated PM2.5 and two CRFs, wildfire and nonwildfire specific, to understand their impact on the estimation of excess admissions and sources of uncertainty. We estimate the fires accounted for an excess 240 (95% CI: 114, 404) respiratory, 68 (95% CI: -10, 159) cardiovascular, and 45 (95% CI: 18, 81) asthma hospital admissions, with 56% of admissions occurring in the Bay Area. Although differences between impact assessment methods are not statistically significant, the admissions estimates' magnitude is particularly sensitive to the CRF specified while the uncertainty is most sensitive to estimates of fire-originated PM2.5. Not accounting for the exposure surface's uncertainty leads to an underestimation of the uncertainty of the health impacts estimated. Employing context-specific CRFs and using accurate exposure estimates that combine multiple data sets generates more certain estimates of the acute health impacts of wildfires. [Description provided by NIOSH]
• Subjects:
  Air Pollutants, Occupational Environmental Exposure Epidemiology Fires Occupational Health Particulate Matter Safety Wildfires
• Keywords:
  Airborne Particles Air Pollutants Author Keywords: Air Pollution Environmental Exposure Fine Particulate Matter Health Effects Health Impact Assessment Health Impacts Particulates Population Exposure Smoke Inhalation Wildfire Smoke

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• ISSN:
  2471-1403
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Grant
• Genre:
  Journal Article
• Place as Subject:
  North Carolina ; OSHA Region 4
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Volume:
  5
• Issue:
  7
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:20068063
• Citation:
  GeoHealth 2021 Jul; 5(7):e2021GH000414
• Contact Point Address:
  J. Jason West, Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
• Email:
  jjwest@email.unc.edu
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  2021
• Performing Organization:
  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
• Peer Reviewed:
  True
• Start Date:
  20050701
• Source Full Name:
  GeoHealth
• End Date:
  20270630
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:985e076a36f71e658e061a38c653788dd3942449c161c1e513928fcf26d95b04f5734fdeb9b6fa583ec2866ce77de6145ba7d6fa5fdd009ca5accb24ce8c8f29
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/230282/cdc_230282_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 1.66 MB ]