Longitudinal relationships between lung cancer mortality rates, smoking, and ambient air quality: a comprehensive review and analysis.

Lung cancer mortality (LCM) has been associated with smoking and air pollution. This article draws on smoking relationships to clarify air pollution relationships. We analyzed cohort and population-based smoking studies and identified effects of latency and cumulative exposures.

Environmental predictors of survival in a cohort of U.S. military veterans: A multi-level spatio-temporal analysis stratified by race.

We analyzed racial differences in all-cause mortality rates associated with air pollution in a cohort of military veterans in which 37% of the 70,000 members identified as African-American (black). In this comprehensive analysis, spatial levels comprised individuals, zip-codes, and counties. Temporal levels comprised the 26-y follow-up period (1976-2001) and 4 subperiods.

Revisiting the Veterans Cohort Mortality Study: New results and synthesis.

The Veterans Cohort Mortality Study began in 1999 in collaboration with Washington University in St. Louis, comprising ~70,000 male military veterans. We published six research papers on this cohort, considering the dynamics of all-cause mortality as the subjects aged and environmental parameters changed.

The impact of frequency and duration of air quality monitoring: Atlanta, GA, data modeling of air pollution and mortality.

The purpose of this analysis is threefold. We first examine the extent to which a longer series of data improves our understanding of air pollution on human mortality in the Atlanta, GA, area by updating the findings presented in Klemm and Mason (J. Air Waste Manage.

Is the air pollution health research community prepared to support a multipollutant air quality management framework?

Ambient air pollution is always encountered as a complex mixture, but past regulatory and research strategies largely focused on single pollutants, pollutant classes, and sources one-at-a-time. There is a trend toward managing air quality in a progressively "multipollutant" manner, with the idealized goal of controlling as many air contaminants as possible in an integrated manner to achieve the greatest total reduction of adverse health and environmental impacts. This commentary considers the current ability of the environmental air pollution exposure and health research communities to provide evidence to inform the development of multipollutant air quality management strategies and assess their effectiveness.

Air pollution and survival within the Washington University-EPRI veterans cohort: risks based on modeled estimates of ambient levels of hazardous and criteria air pollutants.

For this paper, we considered relationships between mortality, vehicular traffic density, and ambient levels of 12 hazardous air pollutants, elemental carbon (EC), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), sulfur dioxide (SO2), and sulfate (SO4(2-)). These pollutant species were selected as markers for specific types of emission sources, including vehicular traffic, coal combustion, smelters, and metal-working industries. Pollutant exposures were estimated using emissions inventories and atmospheric dispersion models.

On exposure and response relationships for health effects associated with exposure to vehicular traffic.

This work examines various metrics and models that have been used to estimate long-term health effects of exposure to vehicular traffic. Such health impacts may include effects of air pollution due to emissions of combustion products and from vehicle or roadway wear, of noise, stress, or from socioeconomic effects associated with preferred residential locations. Both categorical and continuous exposure metrics are considered, typically for distances between residences and roadways, or for traffic density or intensity.

Air pollution, blood pressure, and their long-term associations with mortality.

This article addresses the importance of blood pressure as a covariate in studies of long-term associations between air quality and mortality. We focus on a cohort of about 50,000 U.S.