Young S Stanley, Smith Richard L, Lopiano Keneth K
CGStat, 3401 Caldwell Drive, Raleigh, NC 27607, United States.
University of North Carolina, Department of Statistics and Operations Research, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3260, United States.
Regul Toxicol Pharmacol. 2017 Aug;88:173-184. doi: 10.1016/j.yrtph.2017.06.003. Epub 2017 Jun 13.
Many studies have shown an association between air quality and acute deaths, and such associations are widely interpreted as causal. Several factors call causation and even association into question, for example multiple testing and multiple modeling, publication bias and confirmation bias. Many published studies are difficult or impossible to reproduce because of lack of access to confidential data sources. Here we make publically available a dataset containing daily air quality levels, PM and ozone, daily temperature levels, minimum and maximum and daily maximum relative humidity levels for the eight most populous California air basins, thirteen years, >2M deaths, over 37,000 exposure days. The data are analyzed using standard time series analysis, and a sensitivity analysis is computed varying model parameters, locations and years. Our analysis finds little evidence for association between air quality and acute deaths. These results are consistent with those for the widely cited NMMAPS dataset when the latter are restricted to California. The daily death variability was mostly explained by time of year or weather variables; Neither PM nor ozone added appreciably to the prediction of daily deaths. These results call into question the widespread belief that association between air quality and acute deaths is causal/near-universal.
许多研究表明空气质量与急性死亡之间存在关联，这种关联被广泛解释为因果关系。然而，有几个因素对这种因果关系甚至关联提出了质疑，例如多重检验和多重建模、发表偏倚和确认偏倚。由于无法获取机密数据源，许多已发表的研究难以或无法重现。在此，我们公开了一个数据集，其中包含加利福尼亚州人口最多的八个空气流域的每日空气质量水平（细颗粒物和臭氧）、每日温度水平（最低和最高温度）以及每日最大相对湿度水平，数据涵盖13年，超过200万例死亡，超过37000个暴露日。我们使用标准时间序列分析对数据进行分析，并通过改变模型参数、地点和年份进行敏感性分析。我们的分析几乎没有发现空气质量与急性死亡之间存在关联的证据。当将广泛引用的NMMAPS数据集限制在加利福尼亚州时，这些结果与该数据集的结果一致。每日死亡的变异性主要由一年中的时间或天气变量解释；细颗粒物和臭氧都没有显著增加对每日死亡的预测能力。这些结果对空气质量与急性死亡之间的关联是因果关系/近乎普遍存在的广泛信念提出了质疑。
