Dataset Information

The Oakville Oil Refinery Closure and Its Influence on Local Hospitalizations: A Natural Experiment on Sulfur Dioxide.

ABSTRACT: Background: An oil refinery in Oakville, Canada, closed over 2004?2005, providing an opportunity for a natural experiment to examine the effects on oil refinery-related air pollution and residents' health. Methods: Environmental and health data were collected for the 16 years around the refinery closure. Toronto (2.5 million persons) and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA, 6.3 million persons) were used as control and reference populations, respectively, for Oakville (160,000 persons). We compared sulfur dioxide and age- and season-standardized hospitalizations, considering potential factors such as changes in demographics, socio-economics, drug prescriptions, and environmental variables. Results: The closure of the refinery eliminated 6000 tons/year of SO? emissions, with an observed reduction of 20% in wind direction-adjusted ambient concentrations in Oakville. After accounting for trends, a decrease in cold-season peak-centered respiratory hospitalizations was observed for Oakville (reduction of 2.2 cases/1000 persons per year, p = 0.0006 ) but not in Toronto (p = 0.856) and the GTA (p = 0.334). The reduction of respiratory hospitalizations in Oakville post closure appeared to have no observed link to known confounders or effect modifiers. Conclusion: The refinery closure allowed an assessment of the change in community health. This natural experiment provides evidence that a reduction in emissions was associated with improvements in population health. This study design addresses the impact of a removed source of air pollution.

SUBMITTER: Burr WS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6163796 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

The Oakville Oil Refinery Closure and Its Influence on Local Hospitalizations: A Natural Experiment on Sulfur Dioxide.

Burr Wesley S WS Dales Robert R Liu Ling L Stieb Dave D Smith-Doiron Marc M Jovic Branka B Kauri Lisa Marie LM Shin Hwashin Hyun HH

International journal of environmental research and public health 20180917 9

<i>Background</i>: An oil refinery in Oakville, Canada, closed over 2004⁻2005, providing an opportunity for a natural experiment to examine the effects on oil refinery-related air pollution and residents' health. <i>Methods</i>: Environmental and health data were collected for the 16 years around the refinery closure. Toronto (2.5 million persons) and the Greater Toronto Area (GTA, 6.3 million persons) were used as control and reference populations, respectively, for Oakville (160,000 persons). ...[more]

PMID: 30227660

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundNetworks of tower-based CO2 mole fraction sensors have been deployed by various groups in and around cities across the world to quantify anthropogenic CO2 emissions from metropolitan areas. A critical aspect in these approaches is the separation of atmospheric signatures from distant sources and sinks (i.e., the background) from local emissions and biogenic fluxes. We examined CO2 enhancements compared to forested and agricultural background towers in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, as a function of season and compared them to modeled results, as a part of the Indianapolis Flux (INFLUX) project.ResultsAt the INFLUX urban tower sites, daytime growing season enhancement on a monthly timescale was up to 4.3-6.5 ppm, 2.6 times as large as those in the dormant season, on average. The enhancement differed significantly depending on choice of background and time of year, being 2.8 ppm higher in June and 1.8 ppm lower in August using a forested background tower compared to an agricultural background tower. A prediction based on land cover and observed CO2 fluxes showed that differences in phenology and drawdown intensities drove measured differences in enhancements. Forward modelled CO2 enhancements using fossil fuel and biogenic fluxes indicated growing season model-data mismatch of 1.1?±?1.7 ppm for the agricultural background and 2.1?±?0.5 ppm for the forested background, corresponding to 25-29% of the modelled CO2 enhancements. The model-data total CO2 mismatch during the dormant season was low, - 0.1?±?0.5 ppm.ConclusionsBecause growing season biogenic fluxes at the background towers are large, the urban enhancements must be disentangled from the biogenic signal, and growing season increases in CO2 enhancement could be misinterpreted as increased anthropogenic fluxes if the background ecosystem CO2 drawdown is not considered. The magnitude and timing of enhancements depend on the land cover type and net fluxes surrounding each background tower, so a simple box model is not appropriate for interpretation of these data. Quantification of the seasonality and magnitude of the biological fluxes in the study region using high-resolution and detailed biogenic models is necessary for the interpretation of tower-based urban CO2 networks for cities with significant vegetation.

Dataset Information

The Oakville Oil Refinery Closure and Its Influence on Local Hospitalizations: A Natural Experiment on Sulfur Dioxide.

Publications

The Oakville Oil Refinery Closure and Its Influence on Local Hospitalizations: A Natural Experiment on Sulfur Dioxide.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure