The Role of Neighborhood Air Pollution in Disparate Racial and Ethnic Asthma Acute Care Use.

The share of Black or Latinx residents in a census tract remains associated with asthma-related emergency department (ED) visit rates after controlling for socioeconomic factors. The extent to which evident disparities relate to the within-city heterogeneity of long-term air pollution exposure remains unclear. To investigate the role of intraurban spatial variability of air pollution in asthma acute care use disparity.

Local exposure misclassification in national models: relationships with urban infrastructure and demographics.

Background: National-scale linear regression-based modeling may mischaracterize localized patterns, including hyperlocal peaks and neighborhood- to regional-scale gradients. For studies focused on within-city differences, this mischaracterization poses a risk of exposure misclassification, affecting epidemiological and environmental justice conclusions.

Objective: Characterize the difference between intraurban pollution patterns predicted by national-scale land use regression modeling and observation-based estimates within a localized domain and examine the relationship between that difference and urban infrastructure and demographics.

Racial and Ethnic Identity and Vulnerability to Upper Respiratory Viral Infections Among US Children.

Background: It is unclear whether there are racial/ethnic disparities in the risk of upper respiratory viral infection acquisition and/or lower respiratory manifestations.

Methods: We studied all children and children with asthma aged 6 to 17 years in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (2007-2012) to evaluate (1) the association between race/ethnicity and upper respiratory infection (URI) and (2) whether race/ethnicity is a risk factor for URI-associated pulmonary eosinophilic inflammation or decreased lung function.

Results: Children who identified as Black (adjusted odds ratio [aOR], 1.

Demographic and Psychosocial Characteristics, Air Pollution Exposure, and Housing Mobility of Mexican Immigrant Families.

Objective: People of color and lower socioeconomic status groups in the USA, including those of Mexican origin, are exposed to higher concentrations of air pollution, including fine particulate matter (PM). Associations were examined between neighborhood air pollution levels and the psychosocial and demographic characteristics of linguistically isolated Mexican-origin immigrant families. Housing mobility and changes in air pollution levels due to changes in residence were also examined.

Local- and regional-scale racial and ethnic disparities in air pollution determined by long-term mobile monitoring.

Disparity in air pollution exposure arises from variation at multiple spatial scales: along urban-to-rural gradients, between individual cities within a metropolitan region, within individual neighborhoods, and between city blocks. Here, we improve on existing capabilities to systematically compare urban variation at several scales, from hyperlocal (<100 m) to regional (>10 km), and to assess consequences for outdoor air pollution experienced by residents of different races and ethnicities, by creating a set of uniquely extensive and high-resolution observations of spatially variable pollutants: NO, NO, black carbon (BC), and ultrafine particles (UFP). We conducted full-coverage monitoring of a wide sample of urban and suburban neighborhoods (93 km and 450,000 residents) in four counties of the San Francisco Bay Area using Google Street View cars equipped with the Aclima mobile platform.

PM polluters disproportionately and systemically affect people of color in the United States.

Racial-ethnic minorities in the United States are exposed to disproportionately high levels of ambient fine particulate air pollution (PM), the largest environmental cause of human mortality. However, it is unknown which emission sources drive this disparity and whether differences exist by emission sector, geography, or demographics. Quantifying the PM exposure caused by each emitter type, we show that nearly all major emission categories-consistently across states, urban and rural areas, income levels, and exposure levels-contribute to the systemic PM exposure disparity experienced by people of color.

Comparison of Mobile and Fixed-Site Black Carbon Measurements for High-Resolution Urban Pollution Mapping.

Urban concentrations of black carbon (BC) and other primary pollutants vary on small spatial scales (<100m). Mobile air pollution measurements can provide information on fine-scale spatial variation, thereby informing exposure assessment and mitigation efforts. However, the temporal sparsity of these measurements presents a challenge for estimating representative long-term concentrations.

Mapping Air Pollution with Google Street View Cars: Efficient Approaches with Mobile Monitoring and Land Use Regression.

Air pollution measurements collected through systematic mobile monitoring campaigns can provide outdoor concentration data at high spatial resolution. We explore approaches to minimize data requirements for mapping a city's air quality using mobile monitors with "data-only" versus predictive modeling approaches. We equipped two Google Street View cars with 1-Hz instruments to collect nitric oxide (NO) and black carbon (BC) measurements in Oakland, CA.