The Effect of Socioeconomic Status and Geographic Location on Children’s Health
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Children’s health can be significantly impacted by direct exposure to different chemical hazards in the physical environment. Previous research has linked biological factors to an increase in vulnerability, but there are other factors that may affect exposures and health outcomes. Income, geographic location, race, sex, and age can all increase a child’s exposure to chemicals. To investigate these factors further, an analysis was conducted to evaluate children’s environmental health based on indicators of health status, the physical environment, as well as the social environment. A vulnerability index was developed and demonstrated for children in North Carolina counties using ToxPi (http://toxpi.org/ Toxicological Prioritization Index), an analytical framework that was developed to enable integration of multiple sources of evidence by transforming data into integrated, visual profiles. A vulnerability index is a measure of the exposure of a population to some hazard. The index included indicators of child health (asthma, low birth weight), indicators of environmental chemicals (TRI facilities, Superfund sites), and indicators of social environment (income, education). Data was collected at the county level for geographic locations of these known chemical hazard sites, income, education, and population. The ToxPi vulnerability index was ranked, clustered into locations with similar associations, and superimposed over a choropleth base map made in ArcGIS that shows percentage of the county population under age five. This created an interactive map on the ToxPi GIS platform, representing the North Carolina counties’ vulnerabilities. Through a K-means analysis in ToxPi, counties with similar vulnerabilities were sorted into clusters. Relationships were then determined for children’s health outcomes relative to chemical facility locations and socioeconomic factors. The results indicated a strong relationship between lower levels of education, lower income, and higher vulnerability to the health outcomes observed. A K-means cluster highlighted a possible relationship between greater number of chemical facilities and higher vulnerability, though there were fewer counties that implied this relationship than the relationship between vulnerability and socioeconomic status. This analysis provides an example of how disparate data streams can be integrated to inform understanding of the complex factors impacting children’s environmental health. The results suggest the importance of socioeconomic factors on children’s health and highlight the need to consider additional sources and indicators of chemical exposure to evaluate children’s environmental health vulnerability. In future analysis, chemical exposure impact should be investigated through a broader range of potential factors, rather than only TRI facility and Superfund site locations.