Mapping outdoor habitat and abnormally small newborns to develop an ambient health hazard index

Abstract

BackgroundThe geography of where pregnant mothers live is important for understanding outdoor environmental habitat that may result in adverse birth outcomes. We investigated whether more babies were born small for gestational age or low birth weight at term to mothers living in environments with a higher accumulation of outdoor hazards.MethodsLive singleton births from the Alberta Perinatal Health Program, 2006–2012, were classified according to birth outcome, and used in a double kernel density estimation to determine ratios of each outcome per total births. Individual and overlay indices of spatial models of 136 air emissions and 18 land variables were correlated with the small for gestational age and low birth weight at term, for the entire province and sub-provincially.ResultsThere were 24 air substances and land sources correlated with both small for gestational age and low birth weight at term density ratios. On the provincial scale, there were 13 air substances and 2 land factors; sub-provincial analysis found 8 additional air substances and 1 land source.ConclusionThis study used a combination of multiple outdoor variables over a large geographic area in an objective model, which may be repeated over time or in other study areas. The air substance-weighted index best identified where mothers having abnormally small newborns lived within areas of potential outdoor hazards. However, individual air substances and the weighted index provide complementary information.

Spatiotemporal Patterns of Small for Gestational Age and Low Birth Weight Births and Associations With Land Use and Socioeconomic Status

“…Statistics Canada has reported that small newborns are increasing over time for our geographical areas of interest. 5 Nielsen et al 45 published on the spatial distribution of SGA and LBWT for the entire province but comparisons cannot be made due to methodological differences. As for ciSGA/ciLBWT, there are no published temporal trends for each city participating in the CNN to compare to.…”

A Collaborative Research Exploration of Pollutant Mixtures and Adverse Birth Outcomes by Using Innovative Spatial Data Mining Methods: The DoMiNO Project

“…Over the five operational years of the project, the outcomes included development of a new algorithm; creation of an interactive visualization tool to visualize data mining results; identification of an initial list of potential hypotheses and a secondary list of robust hypotheses linking specific chemical pollutants mixtures with ABO. Additionally, the project had other 'side outcomes' such as new classification methods in DM [39], ABO and industrial pollutants maps [40], description of ABO and related risk factors' prevalence [41], testing the usefulness of existing publicly available data, learning about the collaborative process, and training a new generation of interdisciplinary researchers in environmental health.…”