Asthma in St. Louis

The Greater St. Louis area is designated as an EPA nonattainment area for the criteria air pollutant ozone.   The ultimate goal of this project is to use the EPHT tracking framework to identify trends in ozone, ozone precursor air pollutants and particulates and link those with trends in asthma prevalence or episodes requiring emergency room visit or hospitalization. 

Staff from the Missouri and Illinois health departments will identify and characterize sources of asthma data including availability, reliability and access.  They will also identify air monitoring data for ozone, ozone precursors, PM 10 and PM 2.5 and characterize it by location, frequency and time of collection.  In collaboration with our state partners, the Tulane APEX will provide recommendations for identifying the best and most representative health indicator(s) and for determining the best endpoints to track in the air monitoring data.  Tulane APEX will also determine the type of statistical analysis that needs to be conducted and ensure that appropriate data is collected for this analysis.  The goal is to investigate the relationship between the air pollution and respiratory illness in the St. Louis-East St. Louis region.  In addition, the partnership will elucidate the best methods for linking the two disparate data sets and determine the most appropriate statistical analysis for the data. The results of the tracking system can provide information to environmental regulators regarding the effectiveness of their air pollution controls and provide public health agencies with information for protecting those with asthma.