Publications

Drs. Douglas Dockery at the Harvard School of Public Health and C. Arden Pope III at Brigham Young University speculated that exposure to PM might lead to a transient drop in blood oxygenation, which might have serious consequences in humans with heart or lung problems. The investigators designed a study to increase the possibility of observing PM effects by testing a potentially at-risk group (the elderly) at a time of year that historically had experienced relatively high levels of PM (the winter).

Daniel L. Albritton and Daniel S. Greenbaum, cochairs. Report of the PM Measurements Research Workshop, Chapel Hill NC, July 22 and 23, 1998. Aeronomy Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Boulder, CO, and Health Effects Institute, Cambridge, MA.

Dr. John Peters and colleagues of the University of Southern California School of Medicine compared the lung function, respiratory symptoms, activity levels, and bronchodilator use of 10- to 12-year-old healthy, asthmatic, and wheezy children. They conducted the study in Southern California during mid-spring (when ozone levels were expected to be low) and late summer (when ozone levels were expected to be high).

Dr. Thom and Dr. Ischiropoulos at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center examined the effects of low concentrations of carbon monoxide on platelets and cells isolated from blood vessels. The investigators exposed blood platelets (taken from rats) and endothelial cells (isolated from bovine blood vessels) to varying concentrations of carbon monoxide and measured how much nitric oxide was released. To determine if exposure to carbon monoxide causes endothelial cells to produce peroxynitrite, the investigators looked for markers of its presence in the culture medium and in the cells.