Disparities in Air Pollution Exposure and Associated Health Outcomes Among the Communities of the Coachella Valley in Southern California
Abstract
Communities living in the Coachella Valley, at the north end of California's Salton Sea, experience disproportionate air quality and public health stresses, in part due to extreme levels of ambient particulate matter (PM). Reduced water inflows to the Salton Sea resulting from changes in water usage and the impacts of global climate change are expected to further expose large areas of previously submerged sea bed in the coming years, leading to the potential suspension and transport of sediment contaminated by decades of agricultural runoff. These pending human health risks threaten to exacerbate the challenges facing communities already experiencing elevated regional rates of respiratory disease such as childhood asthma , and to worsen the already significant human health disparities apparent within the communities of the valley. The goal of this work is to better understand air pollution and human health disparities in the Coachella Valley by characterizing and quantifying the association between health outcomes, sensitivity to dust events, and socioeconomic status (SES) among regional communities. We use survey response data, local hospitalization statistics, and longterm surface air quality measurements to investigate the relationships between air quality and respiratory and cardiovascular disease in the Coachella Valley, and to identify the specific SES indicators that may be connected to those relationships. Furthermore, we explore air pollution risk and response across the region and identify the most vulnerable communities, most impactful pollutants, and most pressing mitigation needs under future scenarios .
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2020
- Bibcode:
- 2020AGUFMA111.0010M
- Keywords:
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- 0478 Pollution: urban;
- regional and global;
- BIOGEOSCIENCES;
- 0230 Impacts of climate change: human health;
- GEOHEALTH;
- 0240 Public health;
- GEOHEALTH;
- 1622 Earth system modeling;
- GLOBAL CHANGE