Assessing the Impact of Air Pollution on Public Health Along Transit Routes

University Transportation Centers Program2019PDFTech ReportMattingly, StephenHyun, Kyung KateRad, Shirin KamaliArabi, MehrdadFamili, SinaUniversity of Texas at Arlington. Department of Civil EngineeringWestern Michigan University. Transportation Research Center for Livable CommunitiesUnited States. Department of Transportation. University Transportation Centers (UTC) ProgramWestern Michigan University. Transportation Research Center for Livable CommunitiesTexasCaliforniaUnited StatesAir pollutionDiseases and medical conditionsEnvironmental impact analysisEvaluation and assessmentLeast squares methodPublic healthPublic transitRegression analysisRespiratory systemUrban areasTransportation and HealthRespiratory Hazard Quotient (RHQ)Respiratory DiseasePrincipal Component Analysis (PCA)Ordinary Least Square (OLS)Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR)TRCLC 17-0917-09Final Report 9/01/2017-6/30/2019Transportation sources account for a large proportion of the pollutants found in most urban areas. Also, transportation activity and intensity appear likely to contribute to the risk of respiratory disease occurrence. This research investigates the impacts of transportation, urban design and socioeconomic characteristics on the risk of air pollution-related respiratory diseases in two of the biggest MSAs (Metropolitan Statistical Areas) in the US, Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) and Los Angeles at the block group (BG) level, by considering the US Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s respiratory hazard quotient (RHQ) as the dependent variable. The researchers identify thirty candidate indicators of disease risk from previous studies and use them as independent variables in the model. The study applies a three-step modeling including Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Ordinary Least Square (OLS) and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) to reach the final model. The results of this study demonstrate strong spatial correlations in the variability in both MSAs which help explain the impact of the indicators such as socioeconomic characteristics, transit access to jobs, and automobile access on the risk of respiratory diseases. The populations living in areas with higher transit access to jobs in urbanized areas and greater automobile access in more rural areas appear more prone to respiratory diseases after controlling for demographic characteristics.136