Long-Term Ozone Exposure and Mortality

By Michael Jerrett, R. Burnett, C. Pope, Kazuhiko Ito, G. Thurston, D. Krewski, Yuanli Shi, E. Calle, M. Thun. New England Journal of Medicine, 2009

1,444 citations recorded by the source corpus.

BACKGROUND Although many studies have linked elevations in tropospheric ozone to adverse health outcomes, the effect of long-term exposure to ozone on air pollution–related mortality remains uncertain. We examined the potential contribution of exposure to ozone to the risk of death from cardiopulmonary causes and specifically to death from respiratory causes. METHODS Data from the study cohort of the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study II were correlated with air-pollution data from 96 metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. Data were analyzed from 448,850 subjects, with 118,777 deaths in an 18-year follow-up period. Data on daily maximum ozone concentrations were obtained from April 1 to September 30 for the years 1977 through 2000. Data on concentrations of fine particulate matter (particles that are ≤2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter [PM2.5]) were obtained for the years 1999 and 2000. Associations between ozone concentrations and the risk of death were evaluated with the use of standard and multilevel Cox regression models. RESULTS In single-pollutant models, increased concentrations of either PM2.5 or ozone were significantly associated with an increased risk of death from cardiopulmonary causes. In two-pollutant models, PM2.5 was associated with the risk of death from cardiovascular causes, whereas ozone was associated with the risk of death from respiratory causes. The estimated relative risk of death from respiratory causes that was associated with an increment in ozone concentration of 10 ppb was 1.040 (95% confidence interval, 1.010 to 1.067). The association of ozone with the risk of death from respiratory causes was insensitive to adjustment for confounders and to the type of statistical model used. CONCLUSIONS In this large study, we were not able to detect an effect of ozone on the risk of death from cardiovascular causes when the concentration of PM2.5 was taken into account. We did, however, demonstrate a significant increase in the risk of death from respiratory causes in association with an increase in ozone concentration.

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/9cad7195e6e76a0235eac42a75ebabc11cc552ac

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In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

1. Nicholas Z. Muller
2. D. Shindell
3. Annette Peters
4. Jos Lelieveld
5. C. Pope
6. D. P. Vuuren
7. V. Naik
8. S. Paltsev

In Plant Science

1. Ulrich Pöschl
2. L. Horowitz

Citations in the corpus

• Global, regional and local health impacts of civil aviation emissions (2015, methodology): “We apply a log-linear CRF to estimate premature deaths due to long-term exposure to aviation-attributable ozone (Jerrett et al 2009).”
• Tropospheric ozone in CMIP6 simulations (2020, background): “Tropospheric ozone (O3) is an important component of air pollution and an oxidizing species with adverse effects on human health (Jerrett et al., 2009; Turner et al., 2015; Malley et al., 2017) and vegetation (Fowler et al.”
• Loss of life expectancy from air pollution compared to other risk factors: a worldwide perspective (2020, methodology): “6,10,15 This model yields age-dependent excess mortality rates and YLL from five disease categories (LRI, COPD, IHD, CEV, and LC), also distinguished by the GBD,2,3 plus one that describes NCD þ LRI, from which we derive the ‘other NCD’ by subtraction.10 The burden of disease from O3 has been calcul”
• Long-Term Ozone Exposure and Mortality in a Large Prospective Study. (2016, methodology): “On the basis of findings from the previous CPS-II study, more than 217,000 deaths caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) worldwide were attributed to long-term O3 exposure in 2013 (6, 14).”
• Climate, Health, Agricultural and Economic Impacts of Tighter Vehicle-Emission Standards (2011, methodology): “and ozone mortalities calculated using relative-risk estimates for respiratory disease from a two-pollutant mode”
• Extended follow-up and spatial analysis of the American Cancer Society study linking particulate air pollution and mortality. (2009, background): “Two recent studies by Jerrett and colleagues (2007) and Laden and associates (2006) have attempted to examine temporal variation of mortality risk associated with longerterm air pollution exposure in cohort studies.”