Researcher(s):
Esa Grigsby Mika Mandeville Erin Carlson
ENVS course(s): 220 Initiated: November 2014 Completed: December 2014 Go to project site
|
Asthma is a respiratory disease that affects people around the world, including the United States. The presence of asthma in Oregon is consistently higher than the US average. This condition is caused by a wide variety of potential triggers in one’s environment, both outdoors (air pollution from traffic, factory output, etc) and indoors (wood burning, cleaning agents, mold, etc). The range of triggers makes it difficult to define a single cause of asthma, especially when working with outdoor ambient air pollution, composed by a complex mixture of particles. Occupational hazard is believed to have a significant role in the cases of adult onset asthma. The proximity to roads and living conditions are also suggested to influence asthma susceptibility. The distribution of those who are highly exposed to potential triggers is unequal between different communities based on factors such as income level. Within Portland there are many organizations, ranging from environmental to policy based, working towards reducing asthma prevalence. We look at the difference between perceived versus actual causes portrayed by these actors, although pinpointing the exact causes is a difficult tasks to accomplish. Without a single definite cause, organizations emphasize and put their efforts towards varying aspects of this disease. The wide range of triggers, whom it affects, and the variety of perceived causes all create a unique challenge when studying this disease within the context of environmental analysis.
Our framing question for this project became: How does improving outdoor air quality reduce the cases of asthma?
The framing question above led to our focus question: What triggers have the strongest perceived and actual correlation with asthma cases in Portland?
In order to briefly assess the framing question, we made several maps in QGIS of asthma rates around the world and other possible contributing factors to find whether asthma rates are actually correlated to these factors. To attempt to answer the focus question, there was a large emphasis on narrative analysis of the information that each organization studied used in explaining asthma and related that to their perspective on the issue; we also interviewed several people connected to these organizations to get a more detailed view of these organizations’ perspectives. We used Portland maps of factors that are highly referenced by organizations as being related to or causing asthma (poverty and air pollution/air quality) and compared them to maps of asthma rates in Portland, and found a general correlation between asthma, poverty, and air pollution. We also found that organizations' perspectives on asthma lined up well with our findings from the maps, with larger-scale organizations focusing more on environment, policy, and outdoor air quality, smaller-scale organizations focusing more on health, individual action, and indoor triggers. Further studies may shed light on why the factors found are connected to asthma, what to do about reducing asthma prevalence based on these correlations, and should gain further insight on indoor asthma triggers and organizations' successes and challenges in dealing with asthma.