June 12, 2018 By David Cutler, Francesca Dominici President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt have pledged to reexamine landmark environmental policies and to repeal regulations. In their view, excessive regulations are harming US industry, and thus reducing regulation will be good for business. As Donald Trump has said, seemingly without irony, “We are going to get rid of the regulations that are just destroying us.…
A Causal Exposure Response Function with Local Adjustment for Confounding
June 4, 2018 By Georgia Papadogeorgou, Francesca Dominici In the last two decades, ambient levels of air pollution have declined substantially. Yet, as mandated by the Clean Air Act, we must continue to address the following question: is exposure to levels of air pollution that are well below the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) harmful to human health? Furthermore, the highly contentious nature surrounding environmental regulations necessitates casting this…
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JAMA Forum: A Breath of Bad Air: Trump Environmental Agenda May Lead to 80 000 Extra Deaths per Decade
JAMA Forum | May 10, 2018 By David Cutler, PhD, and Francesca Dominici, PhD President Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt have pledged to reexamine landmark environmental policies and to repeal regulations. In their view, excessive regulations are harming US industry, and thus reducing regulation will be good for business. As Donald Trump has said, seemingly without irony, “We are going to get rid of the…
Clever use of public data could sidestep new rule
Science | May 4, 2018 Critics of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) move last week to limit the agency’s use of nonpublic data say it is a thinly veiled effort to prevent regulators from drawing on public health studies that have proved pivotal to justifying tougher air pollution limits. Recently, however, one research team has demonstrated what could be a way around the policy. They used publicly available data to…
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Association of Short-term Exposure to Air Pollution With Mortality in Older Adults
JAMA | December 26, 2017 What is the association between short-term exposure to air pollution below current air quality standards and all-cause mortality? In a case-crossover study of more than 22 million deaths, each 10-μg/m3 daily increase in fine particulate matter and 10–parts-per-billion daily increase in warm-season ozone exposures were associated with a statistically significant increase of 1.42 and 0.66 deaths per 1 million persons at risk per day, respectively.…
Impact of National Ambient Air Quality Standards nonattainment designations on particulate pollution and health
Epidemiology | October 31, 2017 Despite dramatic air quality improvement in the United States over the past decades, recent years have brought renewed scrutiny and uncertainty surrounding the effectiveness of specific regulatory programs for continuing to improve air quality and public health outcomes. Read abstract here
Best Practices for Gauging Evidence of Causality in Air Pollution Epidemiology
American Journal of Epidemiology | September 6, 2017 The contentious political climate surrounding air pollution regulations has brought some researchers and policy makers to argue that evidence of causality is necessary for more stringent regulations. Recently, an increasing number of air pollution studies purport the use of “causal analysis,” generating the impression that studies not explicitly labeled as such are merely “associational” and therefore less rigorous. Using three prominent air…
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Air Pollution and Mortality in the Medicare Population
New England Journal of Medicine | June 29, 2017 Studies have shown that long-term exposure to air pollution increases mortality. However, evidence is limited for air-pollution levels below the most recent National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Previous studies involved predominantly urban populations and did not have the statistical power to estimate the health effects in underrepresented groups. Read more here
Air Pollution Still Kills
Editorial, New England Journal of Medicine | June 29, 2017 In late October 1948, a dense smog descended over the town of Donora, Pennsylvania. The town was home to a zinc plant and a steel mill, both run by the United States Steel Corporation. Susan Gnora, a 62-year-old resident of Donora, started to gasp and cough as the smog descended. She died the next day. Dr. William Rongaus, a physician…
Video Simulations of PM2.5 Levels in Europe and the United States, Choirat
Evolution of PM2.5 levels in Europe and the United States The following videos depict the evolution of PM2.5 levels from 1998-2015 in Europe and the United States. The same color scales are used for both videos. As shown, there are drastic improvements in air quality for the whole US, while air quality in Europe does not show much improvement and some areas, including Milan, worsen. Video Author: Christine Choirat Data Sources:…
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