We assembled a retrospective, administrative cohort of singleton births in North Carolina from 2003-2015. We used US EPA EQUATES data to assign long-term SO2 gestational exposures to eligible births for the entire pregnancy and by trimester. We used multivariable generalized linear regression to estimate risk differences (RD (95%CI)) per 1-ppb increase in SO2, adjusted for gestational parent education, Medicaid status, marital status, and season of conception. Multi-pollutant models were additionally adjusted for other criteria air co-pollutants (O3, PM2.5, NO2). 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: The North Carolina Birth Cohort data are not publicly available as it contains personal identifiable information. Data may be requested through the NCDHHS, Division of Public Health with proper approvals.
Data from EPA's CMAQ EQUATES model are publicly available. Format: Birth certificate data from the State Center for Health Statistics of the NC Department of Health and Human Services linked with data from the Birth Defects Monitoring Program (NC BDMP) to create a birth cohort of all infants born in NC between 2003-2015. The NC BDMP is an active surveillance system that follows NC births to obtain birth defect diagnoses up to 1 year after the date of birth as well as identify infant deaths during the first year of life and include relevant information from the death certificate.
EPA's publicly available CMAQ EQUATES model provided data on predicted SO2 concentrations over critical windows of gestation. The model predicts daily 1-hour maximum SO2 concentrations for 12 km x 12 km grid cells across the study area.
This dataset is associated with the following publication:
Wilkie, A., T. Luben, K. Rappazzo, K. Foley, C. Woods, M. Serre, D. Richardson, and J. Daniels. Long-term ambient sulfur dioxide exposure during gestation and preterm birth in North Carolina, 2003-2015. ATMOSPHERIC ENVIRONMENT. Elsevier B.V., Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS, 333(September 15): 120669, (2024).