Spatially Varying Health Effects of Air Pollution: Understanding the Toxicity of Particulate Matter

• Activity Number: 502
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 7, 2013 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: ENAR
• Author(s): Francesca Dominici*+
• Companies: Harvard School of Public Health
• Keywords: spatial data ; air pollution ; confounding

Abstract

Although there is a large epidemiological literature describing the acute and chronic effects associated with short and long-term exposure to particulate matter (PM2.5), evidence regarding the toxicity of the individual chemical constituents of PM2.5 is lacking. In this paper we assemblelarge data sets, and we link across time and space several heterogeneous data sources on environmental exposures to PM2.5, its chemical composition, health (Medicare billing claims) and potential measured confounders (e.g. socioeconomic characteristics). We develop Bayesian spatially-varying (SV) mortality risks models to estimate the association between short and long term PM2.5 exposure and mortality. We also investigated as whether long-term exposure to some of the PM2.5 components further exacerbate the risk. Our results further advance our understanding of the toxicity of PM2.5 and can be used to generate more refined hypothesis.