The 16th Conference of the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology, August 1-4, 2004. New York City, NY

PM10 in Ambient Air and Cardiopulmonary Hospital Admissions in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: 1995-2000: A Retrospective Investigation of Health Risks

Retrospective studies in Allegheny County, PA have demonstrated a relationship between ambient air pollution, mortality, and heart disease prior to 1995. However, in the past decade, air quality in Allegheny County has generally improved. The current study investigates whether concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM10) in more recent times (1995-2000) are presently associated with adverse cardiopulmonary outcomes.

We evaluated the association between PM10 and cardiopulmonary hospital admissions in Allegheny County from 1995-2000. Daily hospital admissions for cardiopulmonary diseases among the young and elderly were obtained from the PA Health Care Cost Containment Council. County-wide daily averages of ambient PM10 were derived from eight environmental monitoring sites. Daily meteorological data were obtained. Generalized additive models (GAM) with Poisson error and loess smooth functions of the predictor variables (day of the week, humidity, temperature, and time) were fit to the logarithm of the expected number of daily admissions. We incorporated a distributed lag for the measure of PM10 in the model.

Department of Biostatistics, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15261, USA.