Estimation of Health Risks Arising from Exposure to Fluorides in the Air in the City of Puerto Madryn. Application of Spatial Analysis Techniques to Health Surveillance

Abstract

The application of geographic information systems (GIS) to the analysis of risks to human health associated with air pollution in cities is a widely recognized effective tool. The aim of the work was to establish the child population’s patterns of exposure, for which the data of fluoride concentrations from the air quality monitoring network of the City of Puerto Madryn corresponding to the 2010-2012 triennium were used. GIS tools were used to establish a spatial model for estimating or predicting the values of the pollutant at unsampled points based on the known concentrations of the 3,113 samples analyzed. The observed distribution matches the direction of the prevailing winds from the city’s Heavy Industrial Park. The data that exceeded the air quality guide values represented in order to detect areas with a population potentially exposed to concentrations higher than the concentrations of reference. The superposition of these results with the census information allowed the child population’s probability of exposure to be estimated according to the children’s place of residence. The frequency of occurrence of exceedances was considered in order to estimate the burden of associated respiratory diseases and thus define the sampling conditions to be taken into account in designing epidemiological studies and assessing the results of health surveillance programs.