Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155 , USA.
Environ Health Perspect. 2010 May;118(5):614-9. doi: 10.1289/ehp.0901145. Epub 2010 Jan 4.
One challenge in assessing the health effects of human exposure to air pollution in epidemiologic studies is the lack of widespread historical air pollutant monitoring data with which to characterize past exposure levels.
Given the availability of long-term economic data, we relate economic activity levels to patterns in vehicle-related particulate matter (PM) over a 30-year period in New Jersey, USA, to provide insight into potential historical surrogate markers of air pollution.
We used statewide unemployment and county-level trucking industry characteristics to estimate historical coefficient of haze (COH), a marker of vehicle-related PM predominantly from diesel exhaust. A total of 5,920 observations were included across 25 different locations in New Jersey between 1971 and 2003.
A mixed-modeling approach was employed to estimate the impact of economic indicators on measured COH. The model explained approximately 50% of the variability in COH as estimated by the overall R2 value. Peaks and lows in unemployment tracked negatively with similar extremes in COH, whereas employment in the trucking industry was positively associated with COH. Federal air quality regulations also played a large and significant role in reducing COH levels over the study period.
This new approach outlines an alternative method to reconstruct historical exposures that may greatly aid epidemiologic research on specific causes of health effects from urban air pollution. Economic activity data provide a potential surrogate marker of changes in exposure levels over time in the absence of direct monitoring data for chronic disease studies, but more research in this area is needed.
在流行病学研究中评估人类暴露于空气污染对健康的影响时，面临的一个挑战是缺乏广泛的历史空气污染监测数据，无法对过去的暴露水平进行特征描述。
鉴于长期经济数据的可用性，我们将经济活动水平与美国新泽西州 30 年来与车辆相关的颗粒物 (PM) 的模式相关联，以深入了解空气污染的潜在历史替代标志物。
我们使用全州范围的失业率和县级卡车运输业特征来估算历史烟雾系数 (COH)，这是一种车辆相关 PM 的标志物，主要来自柴油尾气。在 1971 年至 2003 年期间，新泽西州共有 25 个不同地点共进行了 5920 次观测。
采用混合模型方法来估算经济指标对测量 COH 的影响。该模型通过整体 R2 值解释了 COH 约 50%的可变性。失业率的高峰和低谷与 COH 的类似极端情况呈负相关，而卡车运输业的就业则与 COH 呈正相关。联邦空气质量法规在研究期间也在降低 COH 水平方面发挥了重要作用。
这种新方法概述了一种重建历史暴露的替代方法，可能极大地帮助流行病学研究城市空气污染对健康影响的具体原因。在缺乏慢性疾病研究直接监测数据的情况下，经济活动数据提供了暴露水平随时间变化的潜在替代标志物，但需要在该领域进行更多研究。
