Using Geographic Information Systems to Evaluate the Effects of Air Pollution on Development and Respiratory Health in Children: a Longitudinal Cohort Study in the Greater Taipei Area

Indoor and outdoor air pollution poses an important health threat to children. Exposure to air pollution may cause various acute and chronic respiratory diseases, and affect neurodevelopment and cognitive functions in children. To evaluate the impact of air pollution on children’s health, we will conduct a study to examine the effect of prenatal and early childhood exposure to air pollution on development and respiratory health in the first 3 years of life among a birth cohort in the Greater Taipei area. We will recruit 500 cohort children and evaluate their physical growth, gross and fine motor skill development, cognitive and language development, and respiratory diseases. We will establish a proper method to evaluate the spatiotemporal distributions of outdoor air pollutants in the Greater Taipei area using geographic information system and land-use regression. The method will be applied to estimate air pollution exposure of the study children during pregnancy and in the first 3 years of life. We will also apply a nested case-control design within the cohort. One hundred and five children in each of the normal and delayed development groups will be selected to conduct indoor and outdoor environmental samplings of their residences. The results of actual environmental measurements will better characterize children’s air pollution exposure and health risks, and will be used to validate the developed air pollutant predictive method. We will use multiple regressions to examine the relationships between exposure to air pollution and the development and respiratory health of children. The results of this study will provide the impact of prenatal and early childhood exposure to air pollution on the development and respiratory health in the first 3 years of life among children. Our study will also provide essential information to promote child health and to decrease government health expenditure.