GIS and Pollution Model in Denmark

Researchers in Denmark created a computerized air pollution model in order to test whether it would be an acceptable tool for assessing the exposure of contaminants. They used a case study from Kolding, Denmark, which had reported three outlets of TCCD emission (tertrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin), one of the reasons they chose this area was because TCCD is a major environmental carcinogen, causing many kinds of cancers. Using GIS software, they layered the computerized air pollution model and immersion concentrations to visualize more accurately which population was being exposed. Along with these layers, they added the addresses, statistics (dead/alive), migrations (whether the person had lived in the area since birth, or whether they had moved into the area later), and which cancers prevailed in the area. The researcher's chose to discard skin cancers in the data, because they wanted to focus on the cancers that caused more deaths.

The red dot in this figure represents the main source of dioxin emission (Aluminum plant, established in 1970). The green dots represent the addresses of the people in the study.

 After layering all the demographic data the researchers created 3 zones on the map, each zone indicating an area with greater dioxin exposure. These zones were used to aid the researchers in analyzing the development of cancer in the region.

The final layer was the cancer case layer, which is indicated in yellow in figure 3. This layer showed the researchers exactly which zone (zone 3) had the most outbreaks of cancer, due to TCCD exposure. The criteria for including individuals in the study were: whether they had moved into the zone during 1986-1998 and whether their cancer diagnosis was given 1 year or less after moving into the area.

Results from this study alerted Kolding, Denmark that they should be concerned with TCCD emission. In 2000, after determining that the aluminium plant was emitting far over the legal dosage of TCCD one can inhale without harm, scientists began injecting carbon and chalk in to the cooling process of the chimneys to reduce the emission of TCCD.

This use of modeling and GIS can be used generally for confined areas, focusing on emission of chemicals within geographical boundaries. The researchers suggested that this kind of intermingling of model and GIS would not be accurate for chemical emissions made by cars, or food related chemical emissions.

http://www.jstor.org.navigator.southwestern.edu:2048/stable/pdfplus/3838105.pdf?acceptTC=true
Isabella