Part 1. Statistical Learning Methods for the Effects of Multiple Air Pollution Constituents.

Journal: Research report (Health Effects Institute)
Published Date:

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA*) currently regulates individual air pollutants on a pollutant-by-pollutant basis, adjusted for other pollutants and potential confounders. However, the National Academies of Science concluded that a multipollutant regulatory approach that takes into account the joint effects of multiple constituents is likely to be more protective of human health. Unfortunately, the large majority of existing research had focused on health effects of air pollution for one pollutant or for one pollutant with control for the independent effects of a small number of copollutants. Limitations in existing statistical methods are at least partially responsible for this lack of information on joint effects. The goal of this project was to fill this gap by developing flexible statistical methods to estimate the joint effects of multiple pollutants, while allowing for potential nonlinear or nonadditive associations between a given pollutant and the health outcome of interest.

Authors

  • Brent A Coull
    Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
  • Jennifer F Bobb
    Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, Seattle, WA, USA.
  • Gregory A Wellenius
  • Marianthi-Anna Kioumourtzoglou
  • Murray A Mittleman
    Department of Medicine, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
  • Petros Koutrakis
  • John J Godleski