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A National County-Level Assessment of U.S. Nursing Facility Characteristics Associated with Long-Term Exposure to Traffic Pollution in Older Adults

Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution increases disease risk in older adults. Nursing facilities located near major roadways potentially expose older adults to traffic pollution. No studies, however, have described the association between nursing facilities and traffic pollution. We obtained d...

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Autores principales: Wang, Yi, Fan, Hao, Banerjee, Aniruddha, Weaver, Anne M., Weiner, Michael
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5877032/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29534437
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15030487
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author Wang, Yi
Fan, Hao
Banerjee, Aniruddha
Weaver, Anne M.
Weiner, Michael
author_facet Wang, Yi
Fan, Hao
Banerjee, Aniruddha
Weaver, Anne M.
Weiner, Michael
author_sort Wang, Yi
collection PubMed
description Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution increases disease risk in older adults. Nursing facilities located near major roadways potentially expose older adults to traffic pollution. No studies, however, have described the association between nursing facilities and traffic pollution. We obtained data on facility- and census-tract-level characteristics of 15,706 U.S. facilities from the Medicare Nursing Home Compare datasets. We calculated distance to major roadways and traffic density for each facility. In the contiguous U.S. (as of 2014), 345,792 older adults, about 27% of residents in non-hospital facilities, lived within 150 m major roadways (A1 or A2) in 3876 (28% of sampled) facilities. Nationally, for-profit facilities, high-occupancy facilities, and facilities in census tracts with higher percentages of minorities were more likely to have higher exposure to traffic. Counties in Virginia, New York City, and Rhode Island have the highest percent of residents and facilities near major roads. Nationally, over one-quarter of sampled facilities are located near major roadways. Attributes potentially associated with higher exposure to traffic included “for-profit” and “higher minority census tract”. Proximity to major roadways may be an important factor to consider in siting nursing facilities. Our results inform potential intervention strategy at both county and facility level.
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spelling pubmed-58770322018-04-09 A National County-Level Assessment of U.S. Nursing Facility Characteristics Associated with Long-Term Exposure to Traffic Pollution in Older Adults Wang, Yi Fan, Hao Banerjee, Aniruddha Weaver, Anne M. Weiner, Michael Int J Environ Res Public Health Article Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution increases disease risk in older adults. Nursing facilities located near major roadways potentially expose older adults to traffic pollution. No studies, however, have described the association between nursing facilities and traffic pollution. We obtained data on facility- and census-tract-level characteristics of 15,706 U.S. facilities from the Medicare Nursing Home Compare datasets. We calculated distance to major roadways and traffic density for each facility. In the contiguous U.S. (as of 2014), 345,792 older adults, about 27% of residents in non-hospital facilities, lived within 150 m major roadways (A1 or A2) in 3876 (28% of sampled) facilities. Nationally, for-profit facilities, high-occupancy facilities, and facilities in census tracts with higher percentages of minorities were more likely to have higher exposure to traffic. Counties in Virginia, New York City, and Rhode Island have the highest percent of residents and facilities near major roads. Nationally, over one-quarter of sampled facilities are located near major roadways. Attributes potentially associated with higher exposure to traffic included “for-profit” and “higher minority census tract”. Proximity to major roadways may be an important factor to consider in siting nursing facilities. Our results inform potential intervention strategy at both county and facility level. MDPI 2018-03-10 2018-03 /pmc/articles/PMC5877032/ /pubmed/29534437 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15030487 Text en © 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Wang, Yi
Fan, Hao
Banerjee, Aniruddha
Weaver, Anne M.
Weiner, Michael
A National County-Level Assessment of U.S. Nursing Facility Characteristics Associated with Long-Term Exposure to Traffic Pollution in Older Adults
title A National County-Level Assessment of U.S. Nursing Facility Characteristics Associated with Long-Term Exposure to Traffic Pollution in Older Adults
title_full A National County-Level Assessment of U.S. Nursing Facility Characteristics Associated with Long-Term Exposure to Traffic Pollution in Older Adults
title_fullStr A National County-Level Assessment of U.S. Nursing Facility Characteristics Associated with Long-Term Exposure to Traffic Pollution in Older Adults
title_full_unstemmed A National County-Level Assessment of U.S. Nursing Facility Characteristics Associated with Long-Term Exposure to Traffic Pollution in Older Adults
title_short A National County-Level Assessment of U.S. Nursing Facility Characteristics Associated with Long-Term Exposure to Traffic Pollution in Older Adults
title_sort national county-level assessment of u.s. nursing facility characteristics associated with long-term exposure to traffic pollution in older adults
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5877032/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29534437
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph15030487
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