An Integrated Risk Function for Estimating the Global Burden of Disease Attributable to Ambient Fine Particulate Matter Exposure

By R. Burnett, C. Pope, M. Ezzati, Casey Olives, Stephen S. Lim, S. Mehta, H. Shin, G. Singh, Bryan Hubbell, M. Brauer and 11 more. Environmental Health Perspectives, 2014

1,793 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Background: Estimating the burden of disease attributable to long-term exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in ambient air requires knowledge of both the shape and magnitude of the relative risk (RR) function. However, adequate direct evidence to identify the shape of the mortality RR functions at the high ambient concentrations observed in many places in the world is lacking. Objective: We developed RR functions over the entire global exposure range for causes of mortality in adults: ischemic heart disease (IHD), cerebrovascular disease (stroke), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and lung cancer (LC). We also developed RR functions for the incidence of acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) that can be used to estimate mortality and lost-years of healthy life in children < 5 years of age. Methods: We fit an integrated exposure–response (IER) model by integrating available RR information from studies of ambient air pollution (AAP), second hand tobacco smoke, household solid cooking fuel, and active smoking (AS). AS exposures were converted to estimated annual PM2.5 exposure equivalents using inhaled doses of particle mass. We derived population attributable fractions (PAFs) for every country based on estimated worldwide ambient PM2.5 concentrations. Results: The IER model was a superior predictor of RR compared with seven other forms previously used in burden assessments. The percent PAF attributable to AAP exposure varied among countries from 2 to 41 for IHD, 1 to 43 for stroke, < 1 to 21 for COPD, < 1 to 25 for LC, and < 1 to 38 for ALRI. Conclusions: We developed a fine particulate mass–based RR model that covered the global range of exposure by integrating RR information from different combustion types that generate emissions of particulate matter. The model can be updated as new RR information becomes available. Citation: Burnett RT, Pope CA III, Ezzati M, Olives C, Lim SS, Mehta S, Shin HH, Singh G, Hubbell B, Brauer M, Anderson HR, Smith KR, Balmes JR, Bruce NG, Kan H, Laden F, Prüss-Ustün A, Turner MC, Gapstur SM, Diver WR, Cohen A. 2014. An integrated risk function for estimating the global burden of disease attributable to ambient fine particulate matter exposure. Environ Health Perspect 122:397–403; http://dx.doi.org/10.1289/ehp.1307049

Subfields: Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis, Pollution

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/cc43fc4089472790da69340bcfab2c766da91f07

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The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

1. Jos Lelieveld
2. D. Guan
3. M. Brauer
4. Qian Di
5. Maigeng Zhou
6. J. Hart
7. Francine Laden
8. R. Rohde

In Pollution

1. Qiang Zhang
2. Ke-Cheng He
3. R. Rohde
4. R. Muller
5. Ian W. H. Parry
6. D. Guan
7. Zhu Liu

Citations in the corpus

• Health impact assessment of active transportation: A systematic review. (2015, background): “5 cannot be differentiated by components, source or toxicity (Burnett et al., 2014).”
• Air quality co-benefits of carbon pricing in China (2018, neutral): “Loss⇤ Health Co-Benefit⇤ Net Benefit⇤ ref [1] ref [2] ref [3] Beijing 1113 331 2443 5.”
• Loss of life expectancy from air pollution compared to other risk factors: a worldwide perspective (2020, methodology): “5 concentrations, which were previously not explicitly related to observed atmospheric conditions but adopted from studies of second-hand smoking.(9) We used the GEMM for the following disease categories: LRI, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), LC, ischaemic heart disease (IHD), cerebrova”
• Air Pollution in China: Mapping of Concentrations and Sources (2015, methodology): “We adopt the framework [20] developed for theWHOGlobal Burden of Disease study [21] that considers PM2.”
• Transboundary health impacts of transported global air pollution and international trade (2017, background): “Evaluating inter-continental transport of fine aerosols: (2) global health impact.”
• How Much Carbon Pricing is in Countries' Own Interests? The Critical Role of Co-Benefits (2014, background): “20See Burnett et al. (2013). Baseline mortality rates vary substantially across countries — for example, rates are relatively low in Sub-Saharan Africa where people are less likely to survive long enough to die from diseases that can be exacerbated by pollution.”
• Addressing Global Mortality from Ambient PM2.5. (2015, background): “To address this data gap, previous assessments have developed extrapolations for high concentrations.14,15 Extrapolations based on linear or log-linear C-R models yield implausibly high estimates of relative risk (e.g., RR ≫ 2) for high concentrations.16−18 Instead, Burnett et al. (2014),16 building”