Hospital Admissions and Fine Particulate Air Pollution
- Paolo F. Ricci, PhD, LLM
-
Department of Environmental Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
University of San Francisco
San Francisco, Calif
- Sorin R. Straja, PhD
-
straja@nars.org
Institute for Regulatory Science
Columbia, Md
Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text.
- KEYWORDS:
- AIR POLLUTION
- CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASES
- DATA INTERPRETATION, STATISTICAL
- ENVIRONMENTAL EXPOSURE
- HOSPITALIZATION
- LUNG DISEASES
- RESPIRATORY TRACT DISEASES
To the Editor: The article by Dr Dominici and colleagues1 is intended as scientific evidence that can provide a rationale for setting a PM2.5 National Ambient Air Quality Standard by the EPA. Although this study is carefully constructed, it does not consider several problems that should be addressed before these results can coherently be used for establishing public policy.
First, individuals spend about 85% of their time indoors2 so it is important to account for indoor exposure risk factors for the diseases considered. Aside from smoking (which was apparently not included either as passive or direct), there are etiologically relevant (inflammatory) risk factors that have not been included in the exposure-response model. For example, exposure to molds is associated with respiratory tract infections, one of the end points in the study. Similarly, there are no controls for body mass index and income.
Second, the authors report negative …
