Stream Condition and Infant Mortality in U.S. Mid-Atlantic States

Autor:	Michael E. McDonald, Steven F. Hedtke, John F. Paul
Rok vydání:	2008
Předmět:	education.field_of_study Health Toxicology and Mutagenesis Ecological Modeling West virginia Population Local scale Conditional probability Pollution Infant mortality Geography Statistical analysis Water quality education Demography
Zdroj:	Human and Ecological Risk Assessment: An International Journal. 14:728-741
ISSN:	1549-7860 1080-7039
DOI:	10.1080/10807030802235144
Popis:	Infant mortality rate (IMR) serves as a summary measure of the health of a nation's population. The U.S. IMR has declined over the past several decades (to 6.85 per 1000 in 2003), but remains high compared with other developed countries. We hypothesized a relationship between IMR and poor water quality at a local scale. We used degraded stream condition, represented by a multimetric index of biotic condition, as a metric for poor water quality. Using conditional probability analysis on county-aggregated data for the state of Maryland, we show that there is a significant association between the extent of a county's stream miles in poor ecological condition and the probability of a county's IMR exceeding the national norm. The overall relationship appears to be robust, as similar associations were also found for the states of West Virginia and Pennsylvania. We are not implying that IMR and degraded stream condition are directly causally related, but rather that there may be common factors that affe...
Databáze:	OpenAIRE
Externí odkaz:	https://explore.openaire.eu/search/publication?articleId=doi_________::4506c2883cdeea530822596dfbc311d4 https://doi.org/10.1080/10807030802235144 Zobrazit plný text záznamu