Air pollution and mortality: specification searches using SMSA-based data.

"A series of cross-sectional multiple regressions of 1969 and 1970 U.S. mortality rates is presented for up to 112 SMSAs, against various demographic, environmental, and lifestyle variables. The basic data set is the same as that used by L. B. Lave and E. P. Seskin...for 1969, except that many more independent explanatory variables have been added. Since not all of these variables were available for all of the SMSAs, there were several data sets analyzed, depending on the selection of independent variables. The regression coefficients for air pollution tended to be quite sensitive to both the inclusion of the new independent variables and the selection of data sets."