California Air Resources Board

Principal Investigator/Author: Ying-Ying Meng

Contractor: University of California, Los Angeles

Contract Number: 19RD006

Project Status: Completed

Relevant CARB Programs: Health and Exposure

Topic Areas: Environmental Justice, Community Health, People at Risk

Research Summary:

CARB applies health impact functions to calculate estimates of the health protectiveness of regulations and policies. While premature mortality and morbidity risks (e.g., cardiopulmonary mortality, hospitalizations for cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses, and emergency room visits for respiratory illness and asthma) from particulate matter (PM) 2.5 exposure have been extensively documented for the use of calculating health benefits, certain health endpoints such as work loss days have not been studied widely in the field. CARB seeks to increase the number of available health endpoints associated with PM2.5 exposure, and specifically seeks data on the impacts of PM2.5 on work loss days. The objective of this research is to examine associations between short-term PM2.5 exposure and adverse health outcomes, specifically work loss days and asthma exacerbations. In addition, the increasing risk of wildfires in California warrants research on wildfires' impact on PM2.5 levels and consequent health outcomes. This study will examine regions before, during, and after wildfire to study not just the health impact of the particulates in wildfire smoke, but also the other components and factors that influence the effect that the exposure may have on work loss days. The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) investigators propose to use the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS) 2015-2018 data and existing government monitoring data for PM2.5, meteorology data, and wildfire data to investigate the health impacts of PM2.5. The UCLA investigators will conduct advanced statistical analyses and will develop concentration-response curves after adjusting for confounding factors, and then will compute the economic impacts using estimated work loss days and daily wages. The results of this project will inform CARB's health benefits calculations of work loss days from PM2.5 exposure related to regulation development, and also from wildfire smoke exposure.

Keywords: health impacts, particulate matter (PM), PM exposure, PM2.5, work loss, asthma, wildfires, wildfire smoke, community