Abbott Nora A, Semone Lucie, Strott Richard, Dodda Praful, Wang Chi-Tsan, Green Jaime, Baek Bok Haeng, Engel Lawrence S, Vizuete William, Serre Marc L
Department of Environmental Sciences & Engineering, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, United States.
Center for Spatial Information Science and Systems (CSISS), George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia 22030, United States.
Environ Sci Technol. 2025 Jan 14;59(1):45-55. doi: 10.1021/acs.est.4c05094. Epub 2025 Jan 3.
The Gulf States are home to industries emitting styrene, benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylenes (SBTEX). Presently, adverse health effects of ambient SBTEX exposure in highly polluted regions, such as the Gulf States, must be evaluated. Epidemiologists, however, are limited by inadequate estimates of ambient SBTEX. Using Bayesian Maximum Entropy, SBTEX estimation methods of varying resource intensity were evaluated, including simple kriging (least intense), incorporation of observational and emissions data trends (moderately intense), and data fusion of observed and Comprehensive Air quality Model with extensions (CAMx) data (most intense). Generally, as resource intensity increased, so did SBTEX estimation performance, where SBTEX Spearman values increased by 0.48 on average from the least to most intense methods. Data fusion of observed and CAMx data was identified as the best ambient SBTEX estimation method in the Gulf States. Exposure estimates revealed that Gulf States residences within commuting distance of high industrial activity experienced 1.64 times higher 97.5th percentile daily exposures to SBTEX on average than those living in less industrialized areas, which could contribute to total occupational and ambient exposure disparities. Furthermore, ambient benzene exposure was greater than the acceptable one-in-a-million excess cancer risk threshold for 75% of estimated residence locations in the Gulf States.
海湾国家是苯乙烯、苯、甲苯、乙苯和二甲苯（SBTEX）排放行业的所在地。目前，必须评估在海湾国家等高污染地区，环境中SBTEX暴露对健康的不利影响。然而，流行病学家受到环境中SBTEX估计不足的限制。使用贝叶斯最大熵方法，评估了不同资源强度的SBTEX估计方法，包括简单克里金法（资源强度最低）、纳入观测和排放数据趋势（资源强度中等）以及观测数据与扩展综合空气质量模型（CAMx）数据的融合（资源强度最高）。一般来说，随着资源强度的增加，SBTEX估计性能也会提高，从资源强度最低到最高的方法，SBTEX斯皮尔曼值平均增加0.48。观测数据与CAMx数据的融合被确定为海湾国家环境中SBTEX的最佳估计方法。暴露估计显示，在高工业活动通勤距离内的海湾国家居民，平均每天接触SBTEX的第97.5百分位数比生活在工业化程度较低地区的居民高1.64倍，这可能导致职业和环境总暴露差异。此外，在海湾国家，估计有75%的居住地点的环境苯暴露超过了可接受的百万分之一额外癌症风险阈值。
