An initial assessment of spatial relationships between respiratory cases, soil metal content, air quality and deprivation indicators in Glasgow, Scotland, UK: relevance to the environmental justice agenda

Abstract

There is growing interest in links between poor health and socio-environmental inequalities (e.g. inferior housing, crime and industrial emissions) under the environmental justice agenda. The current project assessed associations between soil metal content, air pollution (NO2/PM10) and deprivation and health (respiratory case incidence) across Glasgow. This is the first time that both chemical land quality and air pollution have been assessed citywide in the context of deprivation and health for a major UK conurbation. Based on the dataset ‘averages’ for intermediate geography areas, generalised linear modelling of respiratory cases showed significant associations with overall soil metal concentration (p = 0.0367) and with deprivation (p < 0.0448). Of the individual soil metals, only nickel showed a significant relationship with respiratory cases (p = 0.0056). Whilst these associations could simply represent concordant lower soil metal concentrations and fewer respiratory cases in the rural versus the urban environment, they are interesting given (1) possible contributions from soil to air particulate loading and (2) known associations between airborne metals like nickel and health. This study also demonstrated a statistically significant correlation (−0.213; p < 0.05) between soil metal concentration and deprivation across Glasgow. This highlights the fact that despite numerous regeneration programmes, the legacy of environmental pollution remains in post-industrial areas of Glasgow many decades after heavy industry has declined. Further epidemiological investigations would be required to determine whether there are any causal links between soil quality and population health/well-being. However, the results of this study suggest that poor soil quality warrants greater consideration in future health and socio-environmental inequality assessments.

A comparison of methods used to calculate normal background concentrations of potentially toxic elements for urban soil

“…The use of SI data, also has implications for wider international research and is of use for the assessment of risks to water quality and for epidemiological studies in the field of medical geology (Fordyce et al, 2005;Morrison et al, 2014).…”

Optimising value from the soft re-use of brownfield sites

“…Rehabilitation of brownfield in general can foster public health benefits in the local community. Where this is associated with public access to greenspace there may be significant additional benefits to public health and wellbeing (Bambra et al 2014, Morrison et al 2014, Forest Research 2010.  A renaissance of new forms of urban gardening, community gardens and urban farming increases the demand for, and feasibility of, adapting brownfields for green uses.…”

The Link between Soil Geochemistry in South-West England and Human Exposure to Soil Arsenic

“…The detailed geochemical information that they provide highlights the spatial distribution of elements [22] and a reference point by which, for example, environmental change may be monitored and previous land activities identified (e.g., mineral exploration) [17,23]. The usefulness of baseline geochemistry data to health was highlighted in 1998 [24], and more recently, soil geochemistry from baseline data sets has been used to make linkages with the potential hazards to human [25][26][27][28] and animal health [29].…”