%0 Journal Article
%T Gravity models to classify commuting vs. resident workers. An application to the analysis of residential risk in a contaminated area
%A Guido Signorino
%A Roberto Pasetto
%A Elisa Gatto
%A Massimo Mucciardi
%A Marina La Rocca
%A Pierpaolo Mudu
%J International Journal of Health Geographics
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1476-072x-10-11
%X A logistic regression model is implemented to measure the capacity of Gela "central location" to attract commuting flows from other sites. Drawing from gravity models, the proposed methodology: a) defines the probability of finding commuters from municipalities outside Gela as a function of the origin's "economic mass" and of its distance from each destination; b) establishes "commuting thresholds" relative to the origin's mass. The analysis includes 367 out of the 390 Sicilian municipalities. Results are applied to define "commuters" and "residents" within the cohort of petrochemical workers. The study population is composed of 5,627 workers. Different categories of residence in Gela are compared calculating Mortality Rate Ratios for lung cancer through a Poisson regression model, controlling for age and calendar period. The mobility model correctly classifies almost 90% of observations. Its application to the mortality analysis confirms a major risk for lung cancer associated with residence in Gela.Commuting is a critical aspect of the health-environment relationship in contaminated areas. The proposed methodology can be replicated to different contexts when residential information is lacking or unreliable; however, a careful consideration of the territorial characteristics ("insularity" and its impact on transportation time and costs, in our case) is suggested when specifying the area of application for the mobility analysis.Epidemiological studies have extensively considered mobility, intended as the change of individual residence, as a risk factor for health. Mobility accounts for accessibility to health services [1-3], and is widely used as a proxy for different times of exposure to environmental pollutants over an individual's lifetime. Furthermore, human mobility has been analyzed as one of the most important vehicles of infectious diseases [4-8]. More generally, the relationship between migration and health is controversial; higher morbidity or mortality ra
%U http://www.ij-healthgeographics.com/content/10/1/11