Environmental hazards and stress: evidence from the Texas City Stress and Health Study
- 1University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas, USA
- 2University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
- Correspondence to Dr M K Peek, Department of Preventive Medicine and Community Health, University of Texas Medical Branch, 301 University Blvd, Galveston, TX 77555-1153, USA; mkpeek{at}utmb.edu
- Accepted 14 January 2009
- Published Online First 11 March 2009
Abstract
Background: Substantial research has suggested that exposure to environmental health hazards, such as polluting industrial activity, has deleterious effects on psychological and physiological well-being. However, one gap in the existing literature is comparative analysis of objective and subjective exposure’s relative association with various measurable outcomes of exposure.
Methods: These relationships were explored within a community sample of 2604 respondents living near a large petrochemical complex in Texas City, Texas, USA. Objective exposure was investigated using distance of residence from a cluster of petrochemical plants and subjective exposure using residents’ concern about potential health effects from those plants. Regression models were then used to examine how each type of exposure predicts perceived stress, physiological markers of stress and perceived health.
Results: Results suggest that objective exposure was associated primarily with markers of physiological stress (interleukin-6 and viral reactivation), and subjective exposure (concern about petrochemical health risk) was associated with variables assessing perceived health.
Conclusions: From the analysis, it can be inferred that, in the context of an environmental hazard of this type, subjective exposure may be at least as important a predictor of poor health outcomes as objective exposure.
Footnotes
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Funding Supported by grant P50 CA105631 (University of Texas Medical Branch, Center for Population Health and Health Disparities, James S Goodwin, PI) funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute.
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Competing interests None.
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Ethics approval The institutional review board at the University of Texas approved the protocol, and informed consent was obtained from all study participants.
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Provenance and Peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.
