We found a significant risk of ED visits in young children with elevated Tmax. Risk patterns vary based on age with infants showing delayed risk and toddlers and preschoolers with same day risk. In addition, the finding of increased risk of injury associated with higher temperatures is novel. Altogether, these findings suggest a need for a tailored public health response, such as different messages to caregivers of different age children, to protect children from the effects of heat. Next steps include examining specific subcategories of diagnoses to develop protective strategies and better anticipate the needs of population health in future scenarios of climate change.

A large body of literature published in recent years suggests increased health risk due to exposure of people to air pollution in close proximity to roadways. As a result, there is a need to more accurately represent the spatial concentration gradients near roadways to develop mitigation strategies. In this paper, we present a practical, readily adaptable methodology, using a "bottom-up" approach to develop a detailed highway vehicle emission inventory that includes emissions for individual road links. This methodology also takes advantage of geographic information system (GIS) software to improve the spatial accuracy of the activity information obtained from a Travel Demand Model. In addition, we present an air quality modeling application of this methodology in New Haven, CT. This application uses a hybrid modeling approach, in which a regional grid-based model is used to characterize average local ambient concentrations, and a Gaussian dispersion model is used to provide texture within the modeling domain because of spatial gradients associated with highway vehicle emissions and other local sources. Modeling results show substantial heterogeneity of pollutant concentrations within the modeling domain and strong spatial gradients associated with roadways, particularly for pollutants dominated by direct emissions.

PM exposure was associated with elevated blood glucose, worse endothelial function, and incident CVD events and all-cause mortality. Blacks had a higher rate of incident CVD events and all-cause mortality than whites that was only partly explained by higher exposure to PM.