A GIS Study of Air Pollutants for Association with Asthma Rate in New York State

The present study examines the use of GIS analysis for identifying association between air pollutants and asthma rate in New York State, USA. GIS tools provide spatial analysis of data which can be extended to predict human health conditions due to increased poor air quality levels in a region of interest. In the present study, we demonstrate associating higher levels of particulate matter (PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and Ozone (O3) on asthma discharge rate in New York State, U.S.A using kernel density estimation (KDE). Air pollutant sampling densities and hotspots were defined using the KDE approach based on point data of air pollutants. Higher pollutant concentrations zone were identified and the asthma discharge rate in those areas were determined for understanding the effect of exposure of high air pollutants to asthma discharge rate. GIS analysis show that there are multiple hotspots for these three air pollutants and they are significantly correlated to the locations of asthma discharge rate in the study area. We discuss the risk prone areas explored by the technique of KDE to deduce the association between the air pollutants and asthma discharge rate in the region of interest.