Spatial Relationship Between Criteria Pollutant Levels and Wheezing Due to Asthma in NC

In United States asthma is a major public health problem whose prevalence is increasing. Asthma exacerbations are triggered by exposure to air pollutants, as well as other factors such as tobacco smoke, molds, furry pets etc. My interest is to visually compare the spatial distribution of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) criteria pollutants, and asthma and wheezing symptoms in North Carolina. The criteria air pollutants are ozone, lead, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, SOx and NOx. The concentrations of most of these air pollutants have been increasing over many decades due to urbanization, manufacturing and industrial developments. The asthma outcome that this study focuses on is the prevalence of asthma and wheezing symptoms in children, because childhood asthma has been increasing and it is an important health concern in North Carolina. The North Carolina School Asthma Survey (NCSAS) data set was used in this work, which contains information on the breathing status of all children, enrolled in public 7th and 8th grades of age group 13-14 years during year 1999. The visual comparison of the exposure and health fields will be done using graphical exploratory of the data, and will be aided by the Bayesian Maximum Entropy (BME) method of modern Geostatistics.Master of Public Healt