What Digital GPS Inhalers Tell Us about Asthma Exacerbations from Air Pollution Exposures in California 

UC Berkeley researchers will present results of a new study that used Digital GPS inhalers together with advanced exposure and modeling methods to study the impact of air pollution on asthma and pollution sources of most concern. The researchers found a significant association between exposures to air pollution and increased asthma exacerbations in California.

Investigators studied the effect of ambient air pollution exposures of three criteria air pollutants (NO₂, PM_2.5 and O₃) on rescue medication use in asthmatics. This study found that all three were significantly associated with rescue inhaler use, but PM_2.5 exposure had the greatest impact. For example, there was a 9.1% increase in daily rescue medication use in asthmatics for a 10 ug m^-3 increase in PM_2.5. This result confirms that air pollution contributes to increased asthma exacerbations, even in this study’s group of well controlled asthmatics.

The study also evaluated the sources of the pollution exposures affecting residents as indicated by the location of the rescue inhaler use and the proximity to pollution sources. Sources linked to air pollution in this study included traffic and urban development, industrial, and residential land use.

This study adds to the scientific evidence of the effects of air pollution exposure on asthma exacerbations in California and provides a quantitative mechanism to measure these effects. The findings demonstrate that asthma medication use is a viable and valuable metric that can be used in future CARB regulatory health analysis.

Date:                September 27, 2022
Time:                2-4pm
Location:          Zoom

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Background

There is a strong body of research demonstrating that air pollution contributes to asthma onset and exacerbation, but additional information is needed to improve quantification of these impacts in California. The study included interdisciplinary collaboration and novel scientific approaches to study air pollution exposures, locations of asthma exacerbations and develop quantitative estimates of asthma effects. Digital GPS sensors were fitted on rescue inhalers to record the date, time, and location of rescue medication use and provide a more complete exposure profile. The study’s exposure models used new advanced techniques to model Ozone (O₃), Nitrogen Dioxide (NO₂), and fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) with more localized information than other exposure models.

Another CARB sponsored study is underway with the same investigator to specifically examine asthma impacts in vulnerable communities in Southern California exposed to pollution from ports and goods movement and local industrial sources. The study will evaluate the impacts of these exposures on asthma exacerbations using similar study techniques.

Biographies

Jason G. Su: Dr. Su is a Senior Researcher and Principal Investigator in the School of Public Health at the Unveracity of California, Berkeley. He acquired his first PhD degree in Geographic Information System (GIS) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the second PhD in Remote Sensing at the University of Alberta in Canada. Dr. Su is also a Microsoft-certified application developer. He has two postdoctoral research experiences, one at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada and the other at the University of California, Berkeley, both in environmental health research. Dr. Su applies his GIS, remote sensing, and programming skills to process large scale land use, land cover and remote sensing data and apply mathematical and machine learning algorithms for small area variation environmental exposure modeling. Dr. Su also applies machine learning modeling and bio-statistics analysis skills in environmental epidemiology studies, especially in modeling rescue medication use through data collected through smart inhaler sensors. Dr. Su has published more than 100 peer reviewed papers in GIS, remote sensing and environmental health and has been PI or sub-award PI for grants/contracts funded by California Air Resources Board, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, Health Effects Institute, US EPA Star Program, California Breast Cancer Research Program, Canadian Institute of Health Research, and international organizations.

Meredith Barrett: Dr. Barrett is the Vice President of Population Health Research at ResMed, a global digital health company focused on improving outcomes in respiratory disease and sleep. She spent over 6 years as VP of Research at Propeller Health, which was acquired by ResMed in 2019, developing its clinical and population health research efforts. She was trained in population health with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Postdoctoral Scholar at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health and UC San Francisco Center for Health and Community. She completed her PhD in Ecology with a focus on global health at Duke University, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and followed lemurs for a living. Dr. Barrett is passionate about using unprecedented digital health data to understand and improve health outcomes across multiple levels: for individuals, for clinical care, and for communities. At Propeller, she leveraged data from digital inhaler sensors to generate insights about how social and environmental factors, such as air pollution and the built environment, influence spatiotemporal patterns of respiratory disease. She was a key contributor to the AIR Louisville program, a public-private partnership addressing asthma in Louisville, Kentucky. Her research has been published in Science, Health Affairs, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Environmental Health Perspectives, among other journals.

Shadi Aslebagh: Dr. Aslebagh received the B.S. degree from K. N. Toosi University of Technology, Tehran, Iran in 2005, the M.S. degree from University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, FL, 2013, and Ph.D. degree from University of Washington (UW), Seattle, WA, in 2018, all in electrical engineering. In July 2020, she joined UC Berkeley, School of Public Health, Department of Environmental Health Sciences as a Postdoctoral Scholar and since then she has been working on CARB projects. During her years at graduate school, Shadi worked on projects funded by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), NASA and Office of Naval Research (ONR) as a research assistant and gained experience in the field of spaceborne and airborne remote sensing data analysis and algorithm development and published 10 IEEE papers in the field of remote sensing data analysis.

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