Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Surveillance Summaries, June 2017 / Vol. 66 / No. SS-13

Details

• Alternative Title:
  Rural and Urban Differences in Air Quality, 2008–2012, and Community Drinking Water Quality, 2010–2015 — United States
• Journal Article:
  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Surveillance Summaries
• Personal Author:
  Strosnider, Heather ; Kennedy, Caitlin ; Monti, Michele ; Yip, Fuyuen
• Corporate Authors:
  National Center for Environmental Health (U.S.). Division of Environmental Hazards and Health Effects. Environmental Health Tracking Branch,
• Description:
  The places in which persons live, work, and play can contribute to the development of adverse health outcomes. Understanding the differences in risk factors in various environments can help to explain differences in the occurrence of these outcomes and can be used to develop public health programs, interventions, and policies. Efforts to characterize urban and rural differences have largely focused on social and demographic characteristics. A paucity of national standardized environmental data has hindered efforts to characterize differences in the physical aspects of urban and rural areas, such as air and water quality. Since 2002, CDC’s National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program has collaborated with federal, state, and local partners to gather standardized environmental data by creating national data Standards, collecting available data, and disseminating data to be used in developing public health actions. The National Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (i.e., the tracking network) collects data provided by national, state, and local partners and includes 21 health outcomes, exposures, and environmental hazards. To assess environmental factors that affect health, CDC analyzed three air-quality measures from the tracking network for all counties in the contiguous United States during 2008–2012 and one water-quality measure for 26 states during 2010–2015. The three air-quality measures include 1) total number of days with fine particulate matter (PM2.5) levels greater than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for 24-hour average PM2.5 (PM2.5 days); 2) mean annual average ambient concentrations of PM2.5 in micrograms per cubic meter (mean PM2.5); and 3) total number of days with maximum 8-hour average ozone concentrations greater than the NAAQS (ozone days). The water-quality measure compared the annual mean concentration for a community water system (CWS) to the maximum contaminant level (MCL) defined by EPA for 10 contaminants: arsenic, atrazine, di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP), haloacetic acids (HAA5), nitrate, perchloroethene (PCE), radium, trichloroethene (TCE), total trihalomethanes (TTHM), and uranium. Findings are presented by urban-rural classification scheme: four metropolitan (large central metropolitan, large fringe metropolitan, medium metropolitan, and small metropolitan) and two nonmetropolitan (micropolitan and noncore) categories. Regression modeling was used to determine whether differences in the measures by urban-rural categories were statistically significant. Patterns for all three air-quality measures suggest that air quality improves as areas become more rural (or less urban). The mean total number of ozone days decreased from 47.54 days in large central metropolitan counties to 3.81 days in noncore counties, whereas the mean total number of PM2.5 days decreased from 11.21 in large central metropolitan counties to 0.95 in noncore counties. The mean average annual PM2.5 concentration decreased from 11.15 μg/m3 in large central metropolitan counties to 8.87 μg/m3 in noncore counties. Patterns for the water-quality measure suggest that water quality improves as areas become more urban (or less rural). Overall, 7% of CWSs reported at least one annual mean concentration greater than the MCL for all 10 contaminants combined. The percentage increased from 5.4% in large central metropolitan counties to 10% in noncore counties, a difference that was significant, adjusting for U.S. region, CWS size, water source, and potential spatial correlation. Similar results were found for two disinfection by-products, HAA5 and TTHM. Arsenic was the only other contaminant with a significant result. Medium metropolitan counties had 3.1% of CWSs reporting at least one annual mean greater than the MCL, compared with 2.4% in large central counties.
  
  Suggested citation for this article: Strosnider H, Kennedy C, Monti M, Yip F. Rural and Urban Differences in Air Quality, 2008–2012, and Community Drinking Water Quality, 2010–2015 — United States MMWR Surveill Summ 2017;66(No. SS-13):1–10. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.ss6613a1.
  
  
• Subjects:
  Air Pollution Health Status Disparities Rural Health Socioeconomic Factors Urban Health Water Quality
• Source:
  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR): Surveillance Summaries, 2017; v. 66, no. 13
• Series:
  Surveillance Summaries: Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
• DOI:
  http://dx.doi.org/10.15585/mmwr.ss6613a1
• ISSN:
  1546-0738 (print) ; 1545-8636 (digital)
• Document Type:
  Journal Issue
• Genre:
  Statistics
• Place as Subject:
  United States
• Pages in Document:
  16 pdf pages
• Volume:
  66
• Issue:
  13
• Collection(s):
  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:ff2891d3813a4df6207ca1bded7a509c2842ef60715c62376cb8a21b1c763ce78a3f41f59c4bef8beb6e48754d0ac88c62c82d8fc3497a4a496197bc38cb5030
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/46361/cdc_46361_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 242.43 KB ]