TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL DISTRIBUTIONS OF OZONE IN ATLANTA - REGULATORY AND EPIDEMIOLOGIC IMPLICATIONS

Relationships between ambient levels of selected air pollutants and pe diatric asthma exacerbation in Atlanta were studied retrospectively. A s a part of this study, temporal and spatial distributions of ambient ozone concentrations in the 20-county Atlanta metropolitan area during the summers of 1993, 1994, and 1995 were assessed. A universal krigin g procedure was used for spatial interpolation of aerometric monitorin g station data. In this paper, the temporal and spatial distributions of ozone are described, and regulatory and epidemiologic implications are discussed. For the study period, the Atlanta ozone nonattainment a rea based on the l-h, exceedance-based standard of 0.12 ppm is estimat ed to expand-from 56% of the Atlanta MSA by area and 71% by population to 88% by area and 96% by population-under the new 8-h, concentration -based standard of 0.08 ppm. Regarding asthma exacerbation, a 4% incre ase in pediatric asthma rate per 20-ppb increase in ambient ozone conc entration was observed (p-value = 0.001), with ambient ozone level rep resenting a general indicator of air quality due to its correlations w ith other pollutants. The use of spatial ozone estimates in the epidem iologic analysis demonstrates the need for control of demographic cova riates in spatiotemporal assessments of associations of ambient air po llutant concentrations with health outcome.