Publications

Dr Checkoway and colleagues at the University of Washington tested the primary hypothesis that increases in daily fine particle levels were related to increased risk of out-of-hospital sudden cardiac arrest. Sudden cardiac arrest and questionnaire data, and exposure data were obtained from the Puget Sound Clean Air Agency (Seattle WA). The investigators used a case-crossover study design; for each case of sudden cardiac arrest, a time period when the person was disease free was selected as a matched "referent" period.

Dr H-Erich Wichmann and colleagues at the National Research Center for Environment and Health in Germany prospectively studied the association of daily mortality data with the number and mass concentrations of ultrafine and fine particles in Erfurt, Germany. Concentrations were measured near a road and a time-series approach was used to look at short-term changes in particle concentration and concurrent deaths due to cardiovascular and respiratory causes over a period of 3.5 years.

Dr Morton Lippmann and colleagues at the New York University School of Medicine attempted to identify and characterize components of PM and other air pollution mixtures that were associated with excess daily deaths and elderly hospital admissions in and around the area of Detroit, Michigan. Using publicly available data from 1985-1990 and 1992-1994, the investigators used statistical models to weigh the strength of one pollutant or two pollutants concurrently.

The National Morbidity, Mortality, and Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS) was designed to select multiple locations based on the specific criteria of population size and availability of PM₁₀ data from the US Environmental Protection Agency's Aerometric Information Retrieval System (AIRS) database, and to apply the same statistical procedures to all locations. Dr Jonathan Samet and his colleagues Johns Hopkins University conducted a time-series study of mortality effects in large US cities representing various levels of PM₁₀ and gaseous pollutants.