Eau Claire County Wisconsin. GEOG 435 CHRISTENSON, EMILY RENAE Project Background The purpose of this research project is to identify variables that relate to elevated lead levels in children with the goal of identifying risks that can be targeted for mitigation. To accomplish this, the spatial relationship between lead levels in children and socioeconomic variables will be explored. The questions to be answered are as follows: Where is there significant clustering of elevated lead levels in children in Eau Claire County Wisconsin? Has the distribution of elevated lead levels changed over time? What socioeconomic factors impact the distribution of elevated lead levels in children? The study area of this project is Eau Claire County Wisconsin. Eau Claire County is located in West- Central Wisconsin and has a population of approximately 100,000. The county seat and largest city is Eau Claire. The target audience for this project is the residents of Eau Claire County that want to become more informed about lead contamination. The results will be provided to and presented to the public by the Eau Claire City-County Health Department. This research will help the health department understand the geographic and socioeconomic distribution of lead levels in children. Additionally, the health department can use the results for targeted outreach. The main objective of this project is to identify variables that have a strong relationship with elevated lead levels in children in Eau Claire County. A second objective is to identify if there is significant clustering of elevated lead levels in Eau Claire County. A third objective is to identify a group, based on significant variable relationships, of Eau Claire County residents to whom the health department may be interested in increasing outreach efforts. The final objective is to raise public awareness of lead contamination and poisoning in children. Data The main data requirements for this research project include lead levels in children and socioeconomic data such as average age of homes, vacant homes, and ethnicity. The lead data were obtained from the Eau Claire City-County Health Department. The data were collected via the Wisconsin WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) program, which tests lead levels of participating children annually through age five. The data provided are for January of 2000 to January of 2014. The data were provided as a Microsoft Excel Worksheet containing the following information: addresses, lead levels, collection date, and case status. The data include Eau Claire and several surrounding counties. Measured lead levels range from 0 to 27 g/dL (micrograms per deciliter). According to the CDC, a measured blood level of 5 g/dL or above for children ages 0 to 5 is above the majority of children in the United States and is used as the level of reference for establishing case management (CDC, 2012). Initial processing will be done to exclude all data that lie outside of the study area. The data will be divided into tables by year to assist processing. Additional processing will be done to geocode the addresses and aggregate the data to the census block group level to preserve privacy. The socioeconomic data will be obtained from the U.S. Census Bureaus American Fact Finder for the 2000 decennial census. The variables will be collected from a Summary File 1 General Housing Characteristics dataset, a Summary File 3 Physical Housing Characteristics sample dataset, and a Summary File 1 Population dataset.
Project Approach Spatial Regression Analysis and Hot Spot Analysis will be used to explore the questions for this project. Regression analysis is used to analyze the relationship between a dependent variable and many independent variables. This is useful for combining physical and human data such as contamination and socioeconomic factors. Zeilhofer et al. used logistic regression to determine if waterborne illnesses in sample households are associated with any of the following variables: elevation, number of rooms, reservoir protection, reservoir cleaning, distance, and new supply networks (Zeilhofer et al., 2012). Hot spot analysis is used to show where a phenomena occurs and if there is clustering present. Aelion et al. used Inverse Distance Weighed interpolation for collected lead level soil samples and examined the results for hot spots. In this study, they found that more African-Americans lived in areas with high lead levels than Caucasians (Aelion et al., 2012). Once the initial data processing has been accomplished, a few steps will be used to further prepare the data for the regression analysis. The geocoded addresses will be aggregated to the census block group level. For each year, a spatial join will be performed to attach the lead level data to the census block group polygons. Various statistics will also be given to each census block group, such as the average, minimum, maximum, median, range, and count of the lead levels. The Hot Spot Analysis tool will be used to determine if there is a change in the distribution over time. The tool will be run for each year from 2003 to 2013 using the count field as the measured value. For the Spatial Regression Analysis, the aggregated data will be merged and examined in two intervals: 2000-2009 and 2010-2013. The 2000 Physical Housing Characteristics census data will be used for all regression analysis while the 2000 and 2010 General Housing Characteristics data will be used for the appropriate analysis interval. Additional variables will be joined to the census block groups from the Physical Housing Characteristics and the General Housing Characteristics datasets. These variables include average age of home, percent vacant housing units, and percent non-white. The Ordinary Least Squares tool will be run with the count field as the dependent variable and the additional variables as independent variables for each interval. The results for each interval will be examined for accuracy via the R 2 value and graphing the residuals. If the results are not statistically acceptable, the Geographically Weighed Regression tool will be used with the same variables. Expected Results The results of the analysis will be presented in the form of an informative website. The website will contain web maps of the various factors to show how they relate to lead levels. Also, an interactive web map will created to display the change over time of the distribution of elevated lead levels in Eau Claire County. Additional information about lead contamination, testing, and prevention will be obtained from the health department and incorporated into the website. The website will be produced using Adobe Dreamweaver. At the conclusion of the project, the results will be presented to the Eau Claire City-County Health Department. The web maps, data, and results will be provided to the Health Department to be used for public awareness and information sessions. Conclusion The main objective of this research project is to increase public awareness of lead contamination and identify one or more variables that will assist the Eau Claire City-County Health Department to increase and focus outreach efforts. The questions to be approached are: Where is there significant clustering of elevated lead levels in children in Eau Claire County Wisconsin? Has the distribution of elevated lead levels changed over time? What socioeconomic factors impact the distribution of elevated lead levels in children? Hot Spot Analysis will be used to examine if a change in the distribution has occurred over time. Spatial Regression Analysis will be used to examine if the distribution is effected by one or more socioeconomic factors. The resulting website and web maps will serve as an easy way for the public to learn about lead contamination and determine if their children might be at risk.
References Aelion, C., Davis, H., Lawson, A., Cai, B., McDermott, S. (2012). Associations between Soil Lead Concentrations and Populations by Race/Ethnicity and Income-To-Poverty Ratio in Urban and Rural Areas. Environmental Geochemistry & Health, 35(1), 1-12. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (2012, October 30). What Do Parents Need to Know to Protect Their Children? Retrieved from http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/lead/ACCLPP/blood_lead_levels.htm Zeilhofer, P., Zeilhofer, L., Hardoim, E., Lima, Z., & Oliveira, C. (2007). GIS Applications for Mapping and Spatial Modeling of Urban-Use Water Quality: A Case Study in District Of Cuiab, Mato Grosso, Brazil. Cadernos De Sade Pblica, 23(4), 875-884.