Is long-term exposure to traffic pollution associated with mortality? A small-area study in London

Abstract

Long-term exposure to primary traffic pollutants may be harmful for health but few studies have investigated effects on mortality. We examined associations for six primary traffic pollutants with all-cause and cause-specific mortality in 2003-2010 at small-area level using linear and piecewise linear Poisson regression models. In linear models most pollutants showed negative or null association with all-cause, cardiovascular or respiratory mortality. In the piecewise models we observed positive associations in the lowest exposure range (e.g. relative risk (RR) for all-cause mortality 1.07 (95% credible interval (CI) = 1.00-1.15) per 0.15 μg/m(3) increase in exhaust related primary particulate matter ≤2.5 μm (PM2.5)) whereas associations in the highest exposure range were negative (corresponding RR 0.93, 95% CI: 0.91-0.96). Overall, there was only weak evidence of positive associations with mortality. That we found the strongest positive associations in the lowest exposure group may reflect residual confounding by unmeasured confounders that varies by exposure group.

Socioeconomic and ethnic inequalities in exposure to air and noise pollution in London

“…This pattern is consistent with our previous research in London, indicating different correlations between air pollution and area-level income deprivation across the air pollution exposure range: correlations between exhaust-related primary PM 2.5 and deprivation were 0.16, 0.24, 0.12 and −0.17 according to increasing exposure category. (Halonen et al, 2016) While using personal rather than outdoor residential air pollution is attractive due to reduced exposure misclassification, there may be a trade-off with more potential for residual confounding in epidemiological studies. (Weisskopf and Webster, 2017) Our data are consistent with the causal model proposed by…”

Associations between exhaust and non-exhaust particulate matter and stroke incidence by stroke subtype in South London

“…The KCLurban model is well established for use in public health research (Halonen et al, 2015;Kelly et al, 2011;Tonne et al, 2014) and has been submitted to the UK Model Inter-comparison Exercise, run by King's on behalf of DEFRA (http://uk-air.defra.gov.uk/library/ reports?report_id=777). The model's performance was assessed against long-term fixed air quality monitoring sites that form the London Air Quality Network (http://www.londonair.org.uk).…”

Discrete versus continuous domain models for disease mapping

“…Disease mapping based on areal data is commonly done using the BYM model, see Halonen et al (2016); Riesen et al (2018) for examples. The BYM model is an extension of the ICAR (Intrinsic Conditional Autoregressive) model, obtained by adding a spatially unstructured random effect to the already given spatially structured random effect.…”