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Presenter Name: Jeremy Rodriguez

Title: Asthma Burden in relation to Pollution and Pesticide Exposure in the Bay Area

Subtitle: A dashboard for PHW251B students

Data source: CalEnviroScreen 4.0

Background: CalEnviroScreen (CES) 4.0 is a dataset containing environmental exposure and health outcome markers produced and maintained by the Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment. The data presented on this page is from 2015-2019. The study population for this project are residents living across the Bay Area with county-level aggregate data. In Figure 1, I visualize asthma burden defined by asthma score - the age-adjusted rate of emergency department visits related to asthma per 10,000 people. Figure 2 provides an interactive table displaying the mean pesticide exposure percentiles for each county. Pesticide exposure percentiles range from 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating higher pesticide usage compared to other census tracts in California. For example, a census tract with a pesticide percentile of 75 means that it has higher pesticide usage than 75% of the census tracts in the state. Together, these data and visualizations can provide valuable information for understanding factors related to asthma burden in the Bay Area. Figure 3 displays the spread of pollution burden scores across Bay Area Counties. Pollution burden scores are calculated on a scale of 1-10 accounting for environmental exposure to pollutants and the environmental effects caused by pollution within a given geographic area. Pollution and pesticide exposure are known to both cause and worsen existing asthma symptoms and contribute to respiratory diseases. Understanding the geographic distribution and outcomes related to related to asthma, pollution, and pesticide exposure can inform future public health approaches to improving respiratory experiences and visualize which geographic areas are burdened the most.

Results: Interestingly, the results of the data visualizations show that asthma, pollution, and pesticide exposure each have different trends across Bay Area Counties. For example, Solano, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties each had asthma scores over 50, suggesting high levels of emergency department visits related to asthma. Meanwhile, Napa, Alameda, and San Francisco counties had the highest pollution burden scores. Lastly, Napa, Sonoma, and Solano made up the top 3 counties with the highest levels of pesticide exposure. Considering that Napa and Alameda were the highest in two of the three categories, they both may be important geographic regions to target public health interventions related to reducing asthma burden and environmental exposure to pesticides and pollution. These results also demonstrate the importance of investigating the unique contexts of each county to understand the multifaceted factors contributing to high asthma burden. It may be helpful to employ census tract-level targeted approaches as county-level data can hide the granularity and high-need regions that share a county with regions with better outcomes.

Figure 2: Pesticide Percentiles by County

The interactive table below shows the summary of the averages for the pesticide percentiles for all of the census tracts in a county.

Figure 1: Asthma Burden across the Bay Area

The heat map below displays the average asthma score and percentile for each county in the Bay Area Asthma Percentile is the asthma rate percentile of the census tract compared to all other census tracts in California.

Asthma score is the age-adjusted rate of emergency department (ED) visits for asthma per 10,000 people. The following interactive boxplot graph displays the spread of pollution burden scores across Bay Area Counties.

Figure 3: Pollution Burden Scores across Counties

Pollution burden scores represent a calculated measure of the potential exposure to pollutants and the adverse environmental effects caused by pollution within a given geographic area on a scale of 1-10.