Exposure and Health Assessments of the Effects of Agricultural Field Burning in Young Adults with Asthma Living in Pullman Washington

Agricultural (Ag) burning is a cost-effective method of cleaning and preparing the field for the succeeding growth season. However, smoke from Ag burning may contain various air pollutants, which may cause or exacerbate respiratory disease. However, the short-duration excursions of Ag burning smoke often do not violate the National Ambient Air Quality Standards at locations where air quality monitors are situated. Although a limited number of studies documented potential health effects from Ag burning smoke, there is a paucity of literature characterizing community residents' exposure to Ag burning smoke and the associated health effects. In the past several years, Ag burning has been subject to intense public health debate and in several cases law suits were filed in eastern Washington and Idaho. exposure and health effects of Ag burning. This study was conducted in Pullman, WA during the fall 2002 prescribed agricultural field burning season. This study consisted of 32 young adults with asthma (aged 18-52, median 24) and 2 randomly assigned monitoring sessions for each subject, including an active session and an on-call session. The active session required 16 participants to perform in-lab measures of on-line eNO (Sievers, Boulder CO), coached spirometry (microDL) and complete symptom questionnaires at the same time of day every Monday, Wednesday and Friday during a 30-day period. The on-call session occurred during the remaining 30-days of the 60-day monitoring session for these 16 individuals. During a declared episode, the on-call subjects would be paged in to have all health measures performed with the active subjects over the 3 successive days from the initial called episode. During our study, there were one sham episode and 4 real episodes, defined as more than three consecutive 30-min PM 2.5 averages exceeding 40 µg/m 3. 5 Air quality measurements at the central site included continuous PM 2.5, PM 10 , carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and meteorological conditions and 12-hour integrated PM 2.5 , elemental and organic carbon (EC/OC), and levoglucosan (LG)-a marker for biomass combustion. The personal exposure measurements were collected from 16 subjects, inside of all but four residences, and outside of 6 residences. Exposure estimates included personal exposure measurements of PM 2.5 , EC/OC, LG, calculated exposure to PM 2.5 of outdoor origin, and calculated exposure to PM 2.5 from Ag burning. This report consists of three chapters of manuscripts. The first chapter characterizes the air quality during Ag burning episode and non-episode periods. Two source …