The study population included live births from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) for the entire United States for the years 2000–2005 for all 3141 counties. Domain-specific EQIs were used to represent environmental exposure at the county-level for the entire U.S. over the 2000–2005 time period. The EQI includes variables representing five environmental domains: air, water, land, built, and sociodemographic (2). The ___domain-specific indices include both beneficial and detrimental environmental factors. The air ___domain includes 87 variables representing criteria and hazardous air pollutants. The water ___domain includes 80 variables representing overall water quality, general water contamination, recreational water quality, drinking water quality, atmospheric deposition, drought, and chemical contamination. The land ___domain includes 26 variables representing agriculture, pesticides, contaminants, facilities, and radon. The built ___domain includes 14 variables representing roads, highway/road safety, public transit behavior, business environment, and subsidized housing environment. The sociodemographic environment includes 12 variables representing socioeconomics and crime. This dataset is not publicly accessible because: EPA cannot release personally identifiable information regarding living individuals, according to the Privacy Act and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). This dataset contains information about human research subjects. Because there is potential to identify individual participants and disclose personal information, either alone or in combination with other datasets, individual level data are not appropriate to post for public access. Restricted access may be granted to authorized persons by contacting the party listed. It can be accessed through the following means: Human health data are not available publicly. EQI data are available at: https://edg.epa.gov/data/Public/ORD/NHEERL/EQI. Format: Data are stored as csv files.

This dataset is associated with the following publication: Grabich, S., K. Rappazzo, C. Gray, J. Jagai, Y. Jian, L. Messer, and D. Lobdell. Additive interaction between heterogeneous environmental quality domains (air, water, land, sociodemographic and built environment) on preterm birth. Frontiers in Public Health. Frontiers, Lausanne, SWITZERLAND, 4: 232, (2016).