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- Title
The relevance of commuter and work/school exposure in an epidemiological study on traffic-related air pollution.
- Authors
Ragettli, Martina S; Phuleria, Harish C; Tsai, Ming-Yi; Schindler, Christian; de Nazelle, Audrey; Ducret-Stich, Regina E; Ineichen, Alex; Perez, Laura; Braun-Fahrländer, Charlotte; Probst-Hensch, Nicole; Künzli, Nino
- Abstract
Exposure during transport and at non-residential locations is ignored in most epidemiological studies of traffic-related air pollution. We investigated the impact of separately estimating NO2 long-term outdoor exposures at home, work/school, and while commuting on the association between this marker of exposure and potential health outcomes. We used spatially and temporally resolved commuter route data and model-based NO2 estimates of a population sample in Basel, Switzerland, to assign individual NO2-exposure estimates of increasing complexity, namely (1) home outdoor concentration; (2) time-weighted home and work/school concentrations; and (3) time-weighted concentration incorporating home, work/school and commute. On the basis of their covariance structure, we estimated the expectable relative differences in the regression slopes between a quantitative health outcome and our measures of individual NO2 exposure using a standard measurement error model. The traditional use of home outdoor NO2 alone indicated a 12% (95% CI: 11-14%) underestimation of related health effects as compared with integrating both home and work/school outdoor concentrations. Mean contribution of commuting to total weekly exposure was small (3.2%; range 0.1-13.5%). Thus, ignoring commute in the total population may not significantly underestimate health effects as compared with the model combining home and work/school. For individuals commuting between Basel-City and Basel-Country, ignoring commute may produce, however, a significant attenuation bias of 4% (95% CI: 4-5%). Our results illustrate the importance of including work/school locations in assessments of long-term exposures to traffic-related air pollutants such as NO2. Information on individuals' commuting behavior may further improve exposure estimates, especially for subjects having lengthy commutes along major transportation routes.
- Subjects
TRAFFIC engineering &; the environment; AIR pollution; HEALTH; TRANSPORTATION &; the environment; COMMUTERS; EPIDEMIOLOGY; HEALTH outcome assessment
- Publication
Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 2015, Vol 25, Issue 5, p474
- ISSN
1559-0631
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/jes.2014.83