Spatial Analysis of Selected Reproductive Health Outcomes of Women Living in the Vicinity of the Sydney Tar Ponds, Sydney, NS

Abstract

Decades of steel production and coking in the community of Sydney, Nova Scotia, have led to severe environmental insult. Increased amounts of air pollution from Sydney Steel Corporation and toxic emissions from the Muggah Creek Watershed have been well documented in several studies of the area since the 1960s. This research examines the potential impacts of exposure to hazardous waste on the reproductive health of women living in Cape Breton Regional Municipality through the following objectives: i) to assess the spatial pattern of various types of adverse reproductive events, plausibly linked to the environmental exposure of interest; ii) to determine if this pattern is related to proximity to the Tar Ponds/Coke Ovens site. To address the first objective, point pattern analysis was applied to observations from the Atlee Perinatal Database to determine if the observed pattern exhibited any clustering. To address the second objective, a multinomial logistic regression model was employed to determine if proximity to the Tar Ponds/Coke Ovens site was an important covariate of the adverse outcomes under study (preterm births, low birthweights, congenital anomalies and stillbirths). The results of the bivariate K-function indicated that there was weak global clustering for preterm births for two different time periods, while the ratio kernel estimates demonstrated that the patterns of the outcomes were non-random even after correcting for the underlying population distribution. The results of the multinomial logistic model demonstrated that variables pertaining to maternal characteristics, pregnancy history, current pregnancy maternal diagnoses, neonatal measures were important explanatory variables in the analysis. Place of residence was an important explanatory variable for preterm births and congenital anomalies. However, due to various limitations these results must be interpreted with caution.