Assessment of long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution: An exposure framework

Allison P Patton*, Hanna Boogaard, Danielle Vienneau, Jeffrey R Brook, Audrey Smargiassi, Meltem Kutlar Joss, Adam A Szpiro, Sharon K Sagiv, Evangelia Samoli, Barbara Hoffmann, Howard H Chang, Richard W Atkinson, Jennifer Weuve, Francesco Forastiere, Fred W Lurmann, Gerard Hoek

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Exposure to ambient air pollution is associated with morbidity and mortality, making it an important public health concern. Emissions from motorized traffic are a common source of air pollution but evaluating the contribution of traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) emissions to health risks is challenging because it is difficult to disentangle the contribution of individual air pollution sources to exposure contrasts in an epidemiological study.

OBJECTIVE: This paper describes a new framework to identify whether air pollution differences reflect contrasts in TRAP exposures. Because no commonly measured pollutant is entirely specific to on-road motor vehicles, this exposure framework combined information on pollutants, spatial scale (i.e., geographic extent), and exposure assessment methods and their spatial scale to determine whether the estimated effect of air pollution in a given study was related to differences in TRAP.

METHODS: The exposure framework extended beyond the near-road environment to include differences in exposure to TRAP at neighborhood resolution ( ≤ 5 km) across urban, regional, and national scales. It also embedded a stricter set of criteria to identify studies that provided the strongest evidence that exposure contrasts were related to differences in traffic emissions.

RESULTS: Application of the framework to the transparent selection of epidemiological studies for a systematic review produced insights on assessing and improving comparability of TRAP exposure measures, particularly for indirect measures such as distances from roads. It also highlighted study design challenges related to the duration of measurements and the structure of epidemiological models.

IMPACT STATEMENT: This manuscript describes a new exposure framework to identify studies of traffic-related air pollution, a case study of its application in an HEI systematic review, and its implications for exposure science and air pollution epidemiology experts. It identifies challenges and provides recommendations for the field going forward. It is important to bring this information to the attention of researchers in air pollution exposure science and epidemiology because applying the broader lessons learned will improve the conduct and reporting of studies going forward.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology
DOIs
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 16 Nov 2024

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature America, Inc. 2024.

Funding

Research described in this article was conducted under contract to the HEI, an organization jointly funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Assistance Award No. CR-83998101) and certain motor vehicle and engine manufacturers. The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Health Effects Institute or its sponsors.

FundersFunder number
Health Effects Institute
U.S. Environmental Protection AgencyCR-83998101

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