Characterizing spatial variability of air pollution from vehicle traffic around the Houston Ship Channel area

Population‐Based Study of Traffic‐Related Air Pollution and Obesity in Mexican Americans

“…Compared with PM 2.5 concentrations reported in other studies in the same study area, the modeled traffic‐related PM 2.5 concentrations accounted for only 7% to 10% of total concentrations of PM 2.5 but accounted for 71% of primary PM 2.5 emissions . If comparing the average traffic‐related PM 2.5 in our study area with the near‐road gradients of traffic‐related PM 2.5 estimated in our previous study , the 0.76 µg/m 3 was close to the average concentrations at a 50‐m distance from a major road. This indicated that our study population was exposed to a high level of traffic‐related air pollution.…”

“…Exposure assessment data were available only between 2007 and 2012, and we excluded participants who joined the MAC study after February 28, 2013. February 28 is considered the last day of the winter season in exposure assessment, and by excluding participants entered after this date, we ensured that participants could be assigned an exposure representative of all four seasons, thereby minimizing potential bias from the strong seasonal variation in traffic‐related air pollution . As a result of our inclusion criteria, 7,826 participants were included in this study.…”

“…In this study, we applied a modeling approach that was developed in our previous exposure assessment study to estimate the exposure of traffic‐related PM 2.5 at geocoded residential addresses. This method integrated traffic management data, vehicle emissions, and dispersion modeling into the estimates of PM 2.5 exclusively attributed to on‐road vehicles.…”

“…The modeling method has been described in detail in our previous work . Briefly, R‐LINE requires two inputs: on‐road emissions and meteorological factors.…”

Predicting admissions for adult asthma exacerbations in North Texas

“…Factors which may contribute to asthma exacerbations in north Texas include motor vehicle emissions and urban drilling. Motor vehicle emissions are major contributors to fine particulate matter air pollution (Kheirbek, Haney, Douglas, Ito, & Matte, ; Vijayaraghavan et al, ), and epidemiological studies have inferred the positive relationship between particulate air pollution and asthma symptoms (Munoz et al, ; Zhang, Craft, & Zhang, ). Previous research on children and adults has shown that residential proximity to major roadways or dense networks of roadways are significantly related to asthma symptoms (Gonzalez‐Barcala at al., ; Jacquemin et al, ) and on‐road exposure to air pollution is positively related to minority and lower socioeconomic status (Lindgren, Bjork, Stroh, & Jakobsson, ; Newman et al, ).…”