Innovation

HEI Communication 12 describes a project by Dr Scott Zeger and colleagues at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health that was funded by HEI to make data and software from the National Morbidity, Mortality, and Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS) available to the wider research and policy communities. This Communication contains the Project Report, which describes the Internet-Based Health and Air Pollution Surveillance System (iHAPSS), along with Comments from some members of the HEI Health Research and Review Committees and other experts who had used the data.

Dr Alison S Geyh and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University evaluated the personal and microenvironmental aerosol speciation sampler (PMASS) prototype developed by Dr. Susanne Hering with HEI funding (HEI Research Report 114). The precision and accuracy of the prototype, which measures PM_2.5 mass, elemental and organic carbon, sulfate, and nitrate, was evaluated in two locations with different PM composition. Baltimore, Maryland (outdoors), and Fresno, California (indoors). Geyh and colleagues set a target of 10% precision and 10% accuracy for all species measured.

Over the past decade, time-series studies conducted in many cities have contributed information about the association between daily changes in concentrations of airborne particulate matter (PM) and daily morbidity and mortality. In 2002, however, investigators at Johns Hopkins University and at Health Canada identified issues in the statistical model used in the majority of time-series studies. This HEI Special Report details attempts to address several questions raised by these discoveries.

In an effort to address the uncertainties regarding the association between PM and daily mortality, and to determine the effects of other pollutants on this association, HEI funded the National Morbidity, Mortality, and Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS). Dr Jonathan Samet and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins University, in collaboration with investigators at Harvard University, conducted this time-series study in large cities across the US where levels of PM and gaseous pollutants were varied.