Source-specific contributions of particulate matter to asthma-related pediatric emergency department utilization

Mohammad Alfrad Nobel Bhuiyan; Patrick Ryan; Farzan Oroumyeh; Yajna Jathan; Madhumitaa Roy; Siv Balachandran; Cole Brokamp

doi:10.1007/s13755-021-00141-z

Source-specific contributions of particulate matter to asthma-related pediatric emergency department utilization

Health Inf Sci Syst. 2021 Mar 10;9(1):12. doi: 10.1007/s13755-021-00141-z. eCollection 2021 Dec.

Authors

Mohammad Alfrad Nobel Bhuiyan^{1

2

3}, Patrick Ryan^{2

4}, Farzan Oroumyeh⁵, Yajna Jathan⁵, Madhumitaa Roy⁵, Siv Balachandran⁵, Cole Brokamp^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Division of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, 3333 Burnet Ave, Cincinnati, OH 45229 USA.
² Department of Environmental Health, Division of Biostatistics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45267 USA.
³ Department of Biostatistics, Medpace, Inc., 5375 Medpace Way, Cincinnati, OH 45227 USA.
⁴ Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45267 USA.
⁵ Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH 45267 USA.

Abstract

Ambient particulate matter smaller than 2.5 μm (PM_2.5) is associated with different chronic diseases. It is crucial to identify the sources of ambient particulate matter to reduce the impact on health. Still, only a few studies have been linked with specific ambient particulate matter sources. In this study, we estimated the contributions of sources of PM_2.5 and examined their association with daily asthma hospital utilization in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. We used a model-based clustering method to group days with similar source-specific contributions into six distinct clusters. Specifically, elevated PM_2.5 concentrations occurring on days characterized by low coal combustion contributions showed a significantly reduced risk of hospital utilization for asthma (rate ratio: 0.86, 95% CI: [0.77, 0.95]) compared to other clusters. Reducing coal combustion contribution to PM_2.5 levels could be an effective intervention for lowering asthma-related hospital utilization.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13755-021-00141-z.

Keywords: Asthma; Cluster; Fine particulate matter; Source apportionment; Time-series.