Publications

This newsletter reports on an expert panel named to review diesel epidemiology studies, two HEI Asia workshops on the global health impact of air pollution, and a meeting of HEI's Research Committee and sponsors reviewing progress and priorities, as well as HEI in the news.

This report describes a study in which a nano aerosol mass spectrometer (NAMS) was used to study composition of nanoparticles in real time near a major roadway intersection. Dr. Murray V. Johnston of the University of Delaware, Newark, and colleagues conducted a field test in Wilmington, Delaware, to evaluate performance of the instrument in a real-world setting and to assess whether it could aid in identifying the major source contributions to nanoparticle spikes and background levels, including distinguishing diesel from gasoline vehicles.

Perspectives 3 is the third of a series produced by HEI to describe and interpret results from HEI and other research bearing on important and timely issues for a broad audience interested in environmental health. Perspectives 3 focuses on the health effects of ambient ultrafine particles (UFPs) and was developed under the guidance of a special HEI Review Panel. It examines the contribution of motor vehicles within the broader context of the multiple sources of ambient UFPs and explores the evidence from experimental studies in animals and in humans, as well as observational epidemiologic studies of people exposed to UFPs in the environment. It also identifies some of the broader lessons about both the specific health effects associated with exposure to UFPs and possible directions for future studies that could enhance our understanding of emissions, exposures, and effects of UFPs.

This report describes a study that analyzed the relationships between reductions in pollutants from power plants and fine particulate matter (PM_2.5) concentrations in the eastern United States between 1999 and 2005. Dr. Richard D. Morgenstern of Resources for the Future and colleagues used a novel data-driven source-receptor model to explore the statistical relationships between source emissions of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) and nitrogen oxides and monitored concentrations of PM_2.5. They performed various external comparisons of their models, and compared the reductions to an estimated counterfactual scenario in which no mandated reductions in SO₂ occurred.