Wildfire Smoke and Public Health in BC
Spatial Analysis in Exposure Assessment and Health Implications
Data
The objective of this project is to examine the relationship between respiratory health responses and PM2.5 exposure assessed by three different methods during two large-scale wildfire episodes in British Columbia in 2010. The two fire episodes under study are July 26th to August 6th and August 13th to August 20th.Base Data
The basic geographical units used in this project are the local health areas (LHAs). LHAs are provincial health regions defined by the Ministry of Health for the purpose of health care analysis. The map of LHAs (Link to detail maps of LHAs) used here was produced by BC Stats and retrieved through GeoBC. (Link to metadata)
Population Data
The population counts for each Dissemination Area (DA) were obtained from the 2001 census collected by Statistics Canada and the centroids of DAs were spatially linked to each LHA. (see Map 1)
Exposure Data
Monitoring data
Two of the exposure assessment methods used PM2.5 measurements from the monitoring network maintaining by the BC Ministry of Environment. The network is consisted of monitors which produce hourly gravimetric measurement of ambient PM2.5 levels at 55 locations across BC. (See Map 1) Data corresponding to the fire periods were retrieved from the website of BC Air Data Archive.
Map 1: LHAs, DA centroid and population counts and PM2.5 monitoring network in BC.
(Click here for a larger map)
BlueSky Smoke Forecasting System data
BlueSky is a system predicting PM2.5 concentrations resulted from wildfire events. It utilizes satellite images to detect fire spots. After inputting meteorological model data and fire information, such as vegetation type, to a dispersion model, hourly predictions up to 60 hour in advance can be obtained. The output of the model is a latitude/longitude grid with 0.1 degree spacing and the forecasts are available online. (see Map 2 for a sample of BlueSky output)
Data used in this project were obtained from the Department of Earth and Ocean Science, UBC, who is in charge of running the BlueSky system.
Health Data
Daily counts of filled presciptions of two major respiratory symptom releasing drugs, Salbutamol Sulfate and Terbutaline Sulfate, for each LHA (data available for 85 LHAs out of the total 89 LHAs) were used as the indicator of respiratory health responses. Data were obtained from British Columbia Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC).