Particulate Air Pollution and Daily Mortality: Replication and Validation ofSelected Studies. The Phase 1 Report of the Particle Epidemiology Evaluation Project

摘要

This Health Effects Institute Special Report presents the results of Phase I ofthe Health Effects Institute (HEI) Particle Epidemiology Evaluaton Project. The project was designed to assess the replicability and validity of the results of six studies of particulate air pollution and daily mortality. Phase I of the project had three objectives: (1) to reconstruct from original sources the data from Philadelphia used in earlier studies; (2) to independently analyze data from six locations to see whether the results of earlier studies in those locations could be replicated; and (3) to test the Philadelphia results to see how sensitive they are to applying different statistical techniques, and to making different assumptions about how extreme weather variations or other pollutants also might be associated with increased deaths. Second, they applied statistical methods for longitudinal data analysis (developed specifically for this project) to the data used by the original investigators and produced numerical results for all six locations that closely agree with and, in general, confirm those of the earlier studies.