Publications

Dr. John Balmes and colleagues of the University of California, San Francisco, and Dr. Mark Frampton and associates of the University of Rochester characterized ozone-induced responses in two different study populations: normal and asthmatic men and women in the Balmes study (Part I), and male and female nonsmokers and smokers in the Frampton study (Part II). The investigators addressed three issues: (1) Is an individual's reactivity to inhaled methacholine related to changes in lung function after exposure to ozone? (2) What is the relation between ozone-induced airway inflammation and changes in lung function? and (3) Do the changes in lung function and markers of inflammation in response to ozone exposure differ between normal people and people with asthma?

The Phase I.B Report of the Particle Epidemiology Evaluation Project. The Health Effects Institute began the Particle Epidemiology Evaluation Project in 1994 to evaluate the emerging epidemiologic evidence of a relation between particulate air pollution and daily mortality. In Phase I.B, Drs. Jonathan M. Samet and Scott L. Zeger and their colleagues at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health (1) compared approaches for controlling the effects of weather variables when analyzing the connection between air pollution and daily mortality, primarily focusing on Synoptic Weather Categories, an approach newly proposed by Dr. Laurence S. Kalkstein of the University of Delaware; and (2) evaluated the association between particulate air pollution and daily mortality in the Philadelphia metropolitan area using statistical models that included data for five pollutants regulated under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 (referred to as criteria pollutants).

Dr. Loomis and colleagues at the University of North Carolina and Dr. Víctor Borja-Aburto of the Instituto Nacional de Salud Pública in Cuernavaca, Mexico, collected mortality, air quality, and weather data from records and monitoring stations in Mexico City from 1990 through 1992. Using statistical techniques, the investigators evaluated the association between mortality and ambient levels of ozone, sulfur dioxide, and total suspended particles, both individually and in a model that included all three pollutants.

Drs. Pollack and Brouwer at the University of North Carolina determined the relationship between methanol exposure and its uptake into and elimination from the blood of nonpregnant and pregnant rodents. The investigators exposed rats and mice at several different stages of gestation to methanol intravenously or orally (doses ranged from 100 mg/kg of body weight to 2,500 mg/kg) or by inhalation (1,000 to 20,000 ppm for 8 hours). They measured blood, urine, and amniotic fluid concentrations of methanol and used the data to develop a model of methanol distribution in rodents.