Characterizing Spatial Variability of Climate‐Relevant Hazards and Vulnerabilities in the New England Region of the United States

Abstract

Weather and climate have substantial effects on human health. While much is known about how morbidity and mortality are affected by moderate-to-extreme heat, poor air quality, and heavy precipitation individually, less is known about the cumulative occurrence of these climatic hazards, and the extent to which they spatially overlap with community-scale vulnerabilities. Specifically, there is interest in determining whether individuals living in places with the highest exposure to multiple health hazardous climatic conditions are also more vulnerable to having negative health outcomes. Presented here is a spatial analysis of the distribution of health-relevant climatic hazards and social vulnerabilities across the New England region of the northeastern United States. We show that the frequency of excessive heat days, heavy precipitation days, and ozone (O 3 ) and fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) exceedances during the warm seasons (May-September) from 2009 to 2014 have distinct spatial distributions and are statistically significantly correlated across space with indicators of social vulnerability. We further quantify an integrated measure of the hazards and vulnerabilities to illustrate the spatial heterogeneity of overall risk, as well as to demonstrate how the choice of spatial scale influences the identification of high-risk areas. These methods are transferrable to other locations and contexts, which could be of utility not only to geographers and epidemiologists, but also to policymakers tasked with allocating public health resources to populations at greatest risk of weather-and climate-related health effects.Plain Language Summary It is well established that extreme heat, air pollution, and heavy rain can have negative effects on public health and that certain populations are particularly susceptible to these impacts. However, little attention has been given to how the frequency of these different types of hazards are distributed across space and whether they tend to cluster in places where people are more vulnerable to their negative health effects. In this paper, we examine weather and air pollution in New England and apply a method for identifying communities that have both frequent climate-related hazards and particularly vulnerable populations. Our applications are transferrable and expandable to other locations and hazards of interest, and they are of use both to researchers and decision-makers aiming to assess and reduce weather-and climate-related risks to public health.

Agreement in extreme precipitation exposure assessment is modified by race and social vulnerability

“…Some of these populations are referred to as susceptible, meaning they are biologically predisposed to more severe health outcomes, while others are considered vulnerable, meaning there are societal and structural issues that place them at higher risk ( 59 ). While investigations in the heat and health literature identify ways that data source decisions can affect measures of association by changing exposure misclassification rates, results from the present study show that while different data sources may decrease levels of measurement error and minimize the impact of exposure misclassification, these changes do not occur uniformly across strata of many common environmental and community determinants of health such as race, socioeconomic status, and social vulnerability, which vary substantially over space ( 49 , 60 – 62 ). These factors all increase a population's vulnerability to negative health effects of climate change ( 53 , 54 , 60 , 63 – 67 ).…”

“…While investigations in the heat and health literature identify ways that data source decisions can affect measures of association by changing exposure misclassification rates, results from the present study show that while different data sources may decrease levels of measurement error and minimize the impact of exposure misclassification, these changes do not occur uniformly across strata of many common environmental and community determinants of health such as race, socioeconomic status, and social vulnerability, which vary substantially over space (49,(60)(61)(62). These factors all increase a population's vulnerability to negative health effects of climate change (53,54,60,(63)(64)(65)(66)(67). The results presented here demonstrate that the evaluated data sources and methods vary across commonly identified vulnerability factors, suggesting that different exposure data may limit the ability to detect harmful health effects of climate change in a population at higher risk.…”

Pulmonary, inflammatory, and oxidative effects of indoor nitrogen dioxide in patients with COPD

“…Average ambient temperature and relative humidity on a 4 km × 4 km scale over the sampling period was calculated at the geocoded residential address at the time of each visit. 41…”

Association of Area‐Level Heat and Social Vulnerability With Recurrent Hospitalizations Among Individuals With Rheumatic Conditions

“…In additional analyses, we restricted hospitalizations to the warmer months. We chose May through September because a prior study in New England demonstrated that the frequency of days with excessive heat, heavy precipitation, and ozone and fine particulate matter extremes during these months spatially corelated with social vulnerability (36). We examined separate models for inflammatory arthritis (RA, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, sacroiliitis, palindromic rheumatism, juvenile idiopathic arthritis), connective tissue disease (CTD) (SLE, Sjögren's syndrome, mixed or unspecified CTD, sarcoidosis, inflammatory myositis), vasculitis, crystalline arthritis (gout and pseudogout), and osteoarthritis.…”