Jerrett Michael, Buzzelli Michael, Burnett Richard T, DeLuca Patrick F
Division of Biostatistics, Department of Preventive Medicine and Department of Geography, University of Southern California, 1540 Alcazar Street, CHP-220, Los Angeles, CA 90089-9011, USA.
Soc Sci Med. 2005 Jun;60(12):2845-63. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.11.006. Epub 2005 Jan 25.
Scientists and policymakers have shown growing interest in the health effects of chronic air pollution exposure. In this study, we use geostatistical techniques in combination with small-area data to address a central research question: "Does chronic exposure to particulate air pollution significantly associate with mortality when the effects of other social, demographic, and lifestyle confounders are taken into account?" Our analysis relies on age-standardized mortality ratios for census tracts (CTs) of Hamilton (average population of 3419 persons), social and demographic data from the 1991 Census of Canada, smoking variables extracted from secondary surveys, and total suspended particulate (TSP) data from 23 monitoring stations operated by the Ministry of the Environment. Air pollution data are interpolated with a geostatistical procedure known as "kriging". This method translates fixed-site pollution monitoring observations into a continuous surface, which was overlaid onto the population-weighted centroids of the CTs. Our results show substantively large and statistically significant health effects for women and men. Evaluated over the inter-quartile range of the data, we found the relative risk of premature mortality for TSP exposure to be 1.19 (95% CI: 1.13-1.26) for women and 1.30 (95% CI: 1.24-1.37) for men. We also tested associations with cardio-respiratory and cancer mortality. We found positive, significant associations between particulate exposure and these causes of death in most models. Inclusion of socioeconomic, demographic, and lifestyle reduced but did not eliminate the health effects of exposure to particulate air pollution. Overall our results suggest that intra-urban variations in particulate air pollution significantly associate with premature, all-cause, cardio-respiratory, and cancer mortality in small areas of Hamilton.
科学家和政策制定者对长期暴露于空气污染中的健康影响表现出越来越浓厚的兴趣。在本研究中，我们运用地理统计技术并结合小区域数据来解决一个核心研究问题：“在考虑其他社会、人口和生活方式混杂因素的影响时，长期暴露于颗粒物空气污染是否与死亡率显著相关？”我们的分析依赖于汉密尔顿人口普查区（CTs）的年龄标准化死亡率（平均人口为3419人）、1991年加拿大人口普查的社会和人口数据、从二次调查中提取的吸烟变量，以及环境部运营的23个监测站的总悬浮颗粒物（TSP）数据。空气污染数据通过一种称为“克里金法”的地理统计程序进行插值。该方法将固定站点的污染监测观测值转换为连续表面，并将其叠加到CTs的人口加权质心之上。我们的结果显示，对男性和女性都有实质性的重大且具有统计学意义的健康影响。在数据的四分位间距范围内进行评估，我们发现女性因接触TSP导致过早死亡的相对风险为1.19（95%置信区间：1.13 - 1.26），男性为1.30（95%置信区间：1.24 - 1.37）。我们还测试了与心肺和癌症死亡率的关联。在大多数模型中，我们发现颗粒物暴露与这些死因之间存在正向、显著的关联。纳入社会经济、人口和生活方式因素后，颗粒物空气污染暴露对健康的影响有所降低，但并未消除。总体而言，我们的结果表明，汉密尔顿小区域内颗粒物空气污染的城市内部差异与过早、全因、心肺和癌症死亡率显著相关。
