Research report (Health Effects Institute)
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Res Rep Health Eff Inst · Mar 2009
Effects of long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution on respiratory and cardiovascular mortality in the Netherlands: the NLCS-AIR study.
Evidence is increasing that long-term exposure to ambient air pollution is associated with deaths from cardiopulmonary diseases. In a 2002 pilot study, we reported clear indications that traffic-related air pollution, especially at the local scale, was related to cardiopulmonary mortality in a randomly selected subcohort of 5000 older adults participating in the ongoing Netherlands Cohort Study (NLCS) on diet and cancer. In the current study, referred to as NLCS-AIR, our objective was to obtain more precise estimates of the effects of traffic-related air pollution by analyzing associations with cause-specific mortality, as well as lung cancer incidence, in the full cohort of approximately 120,000 subjects. ⋯ Though relative risks were generally small in the current study, long-term average concentrations of black smoke, NO2, and PM2.5 were related to mortality, and associations of black smoke and NO2 exposure with natural-cause and respiratory mortality were statistically significant. Traffic intensity near the home was also related to natural-cause mortality. The highest relative risks associated with background air pollution and traffic variables were for respiratory mortality, though the number of deaths was smaller than for the other mortality categories. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED)