Evaluating Heterogeneity in Indoor and Outdoor Air Pollution Using Land-Use Regression and Constrained Factor Analysis

This report explores how land-use regression and source-apportionment techniques can be used to characterize individual-level exposure to both indoor and outdoor air pollution sources. Dr. Levy and colleagues utilized health and air monitoring data from an ongoing prospective cohort study on childhood asthma in Boston, Massachusetts to model variability in outdoor and indoor residential air pollution, identify potential sources, and evaluate the effectiveness of various indoor exposure surrogates for predicting childhood asthma development. This study also evaluated how these approaches might reduce error in individual exposure assessment and thereby improve epidemiologic estimates of the effects of traffic-related air pollution on health. This study was funded under the Walter A. Rosenblith New Investigator Award.