GEOB370 Final Project

Wildfire Smoke and Public Health in BC

Spatial Analysis in Exposure Assessment and Health Implications

• Abstract
• Introduction
• Data
• Methodology
• Results I
• Results II
  
• Conclusions
• Limitations
• Future study
• Acknowledgements

Abstract

Wildfire smoke is a major contributor to extreme events of particulate matter (PM) air pollution in North America. Smoke events can impact large populations and induce different health responses. For example, increased respiratory symptoms have been widely reported. 

One of the major challenges for epidemiology study in wildfire smoke is a reliable method of exposure assessment. In this project, we compare the PM2.5 levels measured by monitoring station network as well as levels predicted from a smoke forecasting system called BlueSky during two large wildfire episodes in British Columbia (BC) in 2010. Then, the numbers of filled prescriptions of respiratory symptom releasing drugs during the same period for Local Health Areas (LHAs) , as an indicator of public health responses to wildfire smoke,  will be linked to exposures assigned from different methods. GIS techniques used in this project includes proximity, regression analysis, spatial autocorrelation analysis and so on.

Results show that differences between exposure levels assessed by different methods vary spatially. Population-weighted exposure assigned from the nearest monitors is found to be most related to the public health responses measurement. However, the overall association found from this simple regression analysis is weak, suggesting more sophisticated statistical methods and proper control for confounders are needed in further research.