Air pollution and mortality in a large, representative U.S. cohort: multiple-pollutant analyses, and spatial and temporal decompositions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background Cohort studies have documented associations between fine particulate matter air pollution (PM 2.5 ) and mortality risk. However, there remains uncertainty regarding the contribution of co-pollutants and the stability of pollution-mortality associations in models that include multiple air pollutants. Furthermore, it is unclear whether the PM 2.5 -mortality relationship varies spatially, when exposures are decomposed according to scale of spatial variability, or temporally, when effect estimates are allowed to change between years. Methods A cohort of 635,539 individuals was compiled using public National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data from 1987 to 2014 and linked with mortality follow-up through 2015. Modelled air pollution exposure estimates for PM 2.5 , other criteria air pollutants, and spatial decompositions (< 1 km, 1–10 km, 10–100 km, > 100 km) of PM 2.5 were assigned at the census-tract level. The NHIS samples were also divided into yearly cohorts for temporally-decomposed analyses. Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) in regression models that included up to six criteria pollutants; four spatial decompositions of PM 2.5 ; and two- and five-year lagged mean PM 2.5 exposures in the temporally-decomposed cohorts. Meta-analytic fixed-effect estimates were calculated using results from temporally-decomposed analyses and compared with time-independent results using 17- and 28-year exposure windows. Results In multiple-pollutant analyses, PM 2.5 demonstrated the most robust pollutant-mortality association. Coarse fraction particulate matter (PM 2.5–10 ) and sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ) were also associated with excess mortality risk. The PM 2.5 -mortality association was observed across all four spatial scales of PM 2.5 , with higher but less precisely estimated HRs observed for local (< 1 km) and neighborhood (1–10 km) variations. In temporally-decomposed analyses, the PM 2.5 -mortality HRs were stable across yearly cohorts. The meta-analytic HR using two-year lagged PM 2.5 equaled 1.10 (95% CI 1.07, 1.13) per 10 μg/m 3 . Comparable results were observed in time-independent analyses using a 17-year (HR 1.13, CI 1.09, 1.16) or 28-year (HR 1.09, CI 1.07, 1.12) exposure window. Conclusions Long-term exposures to PM 2.5 , PM 2.5–10 , and SO 2 were associated with increased risk of all-cause and cardiopulmonary mortality. Each spatial decomposition of PM 2.5 was associated with mortality risk, and PM 2.5 -mortality associations were consistent over time.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".