Project 1: Risk Assessment
Overview of project
In this project, Project 1 team develops and applies statistical methods to national data sources to address these objectives:
- Carry out multi-site time series studies for estimating short-term effects of PM and PM components on mortality and morbidity (Phase I);
- Carry out cohort-studies for estimating long-term effects of PM and PM components in susceptible populations (Phase II);
- Assess coherence of evidence from bioassays and epidemiological studies on PM toxicity and susceptibility and explore linkages of sources of harmful PM components to human health risks (Phase III).
By providing individual-level health data for the entire US population of elderly, the National Medicare Cohort allows us to take full advantage of all existing and future air quality databases on PM and its characteristics. This project addresses the following objectives of the Center on a national scale:
- Mapping risks of PM and PM constituents to human health across the United States;
- Using the maps to identify a sampling frame of locations with contrasting higher and lower risks;
- Carrying out more refined epidemiological studies to estimate further the risks of the more toxic particles to susceptible individuals.
The expected results and benefits of this project core will include:
- Development, integration, and analyses of national databases for systematically assessing short- and long-term effects of PM10, PM2.5, PM10 - PM2.5, and PM2.5 components on hospitalization and mortality on a national scale;
- Development of state-of-the art statistical methods for integrated analyses of spatio-temporal data on exposure, health outcomes, and confounders; these might be incompletely observed and available at different levels of spatial aggregation;
- Development of software packages for dissemination of methods and results.
Research in progress
Current research can be viewed in the following annual Progress Reports:
Selected publications:
Recent published articles detailing the work of Project 1 include:
Bell ML, Dominici F, Ebisu K, Zeger SL, Samet JM. Spatial and Temporal Variation in PM2.5 Chemical Composition in the United States for Health Effects Studies (2000-2005). Environmental Health Perspectives. 2007;115:989–995.
Dominici F, Peng RD, Bell ML, Pham L, McDermott A, Zeger SL, Samet JM. Fine particulate air pollution and hospital admission for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Journal of the American Medical Association. 2006;295(10):1127-34.
Dominici F, Peng RD, Zeger SL, White R H, Samet JM. Particulate Air Pollution and Mortality in the United States: Have the Risks Changed from 1987 to 2000? American Journal of Epidemiology. 2007; 166:880–888.
Janes H, Dominici F, Zeger SL. Trends in Particulate Matter and Mortality in 113 U.S. Counties, 2000-2002: Evidence on the Long Term Effects of Air Pollution. Epidemiology. 2007;18:416-423 (with discussion).
Peng R, Dominici F, Louis T. Model Choice in Multi-Site Time Series Studies of Air Pollution and Mortality. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A. 2006;169 Part 2:179-203.