Using Geographic Information Systems to Evaluate the Effects of Air Pollution on Development and Respiratory Health in Children: a Longitudinal Cohort Study in the Greater Taipei Area (Ii)

Exposure to indoor and outdoor air pollution may cause various acute and chronic respiratory diseases, and affect neurodevelopment and cognitive functions in children. To evaluate the impact of air pollution on children’s health, we conduct a study to examine the effect of prenatal and early childhood exposure to air pollution on development and respiratory health in the first 3 years of life among a birth cohort in the Greater Taipei area. We will recruit 500 cohort children and evaluate their neurodevelopment and respiratory diseases. We will establish a proper method to evaluate the spatiotemporal distributions of outdoor air pollutants in the Greater Taipei area using geographic information system and land-use regression. The method will be applied to estimate air pollution exposure of the study children during pregnancy and in the first 3 years of life. We will also apply a nested case-control design within the cohort. One hundred and five children in each of the normal and delayed development groups will be selected to conduct indoor and outdoor environmental samplings of their residences. The results of actual environmental measurements will better characterize the association between children’s air pollution exposure and health risks, and will be used to validate the developed air pollutant predictive method. We are currently working on the first year study to develop methods and recruit study participants. A total of 472 cohort children have been recruited. According to our preliminary analyses, children’s neurodevelopment are negatively associated with mothers who currently smoke, have a history of hypertension or allergy, exposed to second hand smoke during pregnancy, and with higher levels of PM2.5 around households. The results of this study will provide crucial information about the impacts of air pollution exposure on the development and respiratory health among children. Our findings can be further used to promote child health and to decrease government health expenditure.