National Center for Environmental Economics, US Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC 20460, USA.
Department of Economics, Walker College of Business, Appalachian State University, Boone, NC 28608, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 May 13;19(10):5941. doi: 10.3390/ijerph19105941.
Leaded fuel used by piston-engine aircraft is the largest source of airborne lead emissions in the United States. Previous studies have found higher blood lead levels in children living near airports where leaded aviation fuel is used. However, little is known about the health effects on adults. This study is the first to examine the association between exposure to aircraft operations that use leaded aviation fuel and adult cardiovascular mortality. We estimated the association between annual piston-engine air traffic and cardiovascular mortality among adults age 65 and older near 40 North Carolina airports during 2000 to 2017. We used several strategies to minimize the potential for bias due to omitted variables and confounding from other health hazards at airports, including coarsened exact matching, location-specific intercepts, and adjustment for jet-engine and other air traffic that does not use leaded fuel. Our findings are mixed but suggestive of adverse effects. We found higher rates of cardiovascular mortality within a few kilometers downwind of single- and multi-runway airports, though these results are not always statistically significant. We also found significantly higher cardiovascular mortality rates within a few kilometers and downwind of single-runway airports in years with more piston-engine air traffic. We did not consistently find a statistically significant association between cardiovascular mortality rates and piston-engine air traffic near multi-runway airports, where there was greater uncertainty in our measure of the distance between populations and aviation exposures. These results suggest that (i) reducing lead emissions from aviation could yield health benefits for adults, and (ii) more refined data are needed to obtain more precise estimates of these benefits. Subject Areas: Toxic Substances, Health, Epidemiology, Air Pollution, Ambient Air Quality. JEL codes: Q53, I18.
在美国，活塞式飞机使用的含铅燃料是空气中铅排放的最大来源。先前的研究发现，在使用含铅航空燃料的机场附近居住的儿童血液中的铅含量较高。然而，人们对成年人的健康影响知之甚少。这项研究首次考察了使用含铅航空燃料的飞机作业暴露与成人心血管死亡率之间的关系。我们估计了 2000 年至 2017 年期间，北卡罗来纳州 40 个机场附近的成年人（年龄在 65 岁及以上）每年活塞式飞机空中交通与心血管死亡率之间的关联。我们使用了几种策略来最小化因遗漏变量和机场其他健康危害的混杂因素导致的偏倚，包括粗糙精确匹配、位置特定截距和对喷气发动机和其他不使用含铅燃料的空中交通的调整。我们的发现喜忧参半，但表明存在不利影响。我们发现，在单跑道和多跑道机场下风几公里范围内，心血管死亡率较高，尽管这些结果并不总是具有统计学意义。我们还发现，在活塞式飞机空中交通较多的年份，在单跑道机场下风几公里范围内，心血管死亡率显著更高。我们没有一致发现心血管死亡率与多跑道机场附近的活塞式飞机空中交通之间存在统计学上显著的关联，在这些机场，我们对人群和航空暴露之间的距离的衡量存在更大的不确定性。这些结果表明：（i）减少航空铅排放可能会给成年人带来健康益处；（ii）需要更精细的数据来更准确地估计这些益处。研究领域：有毒物质、健康、流行病学、空气污染、环境空气质量。JEL 代码：Q53、I18。
