Publications

This report describes a study to identify factors that influence exposure to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and VOC mixtures. Dr. Stuart Batterman at the University of Michigan–Ann Arbor and colleagues used the extensive data that HEI posted on the Web from the Relationships of Indoor, Outdoor, and Personal Air (RIOPA) study (HEI Research Report 130 Parts I and II), and data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), to characterize exposure distributions for 15 VOCs, with an emphasis on high concentrations. Factors examined included geographic location, weather, characteristics of participants' homes, and specific activities, such as pumping gas.

This report describes a study that assessed levels of ultrafine particles and other pollutants around diesel engine school buses and identified factors contributing to those levels. Dr. Yifang Zhu at the University of California–Los Angeles, a recipient of HEI's Walter A. Rosenblith New Investigator Award, measured pollutant levels in and around school buses while driving, while idling, before and after retrofitting with a diesel particle filter and/or oxidation catalyst, and before and after installing an in-cabin filtration system.

This report describes semiparametric methods for epidemiologic investigations of the short-term effects of air pollution on health, intended specifically to improve the reliability of point estimates and confidence intervals. Dr. James Robins of the Harvard School of Public Health and colleagues developed the new methods, used simulations to compare them with other methods, and applied them to a large epidemiologic data set from the National Morbidity, Mortality, and Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS) to assess their effectiveness. The report is accompanied by a short editorial to assist the reader in understanding this study and its contributions to epidemiologic methods for air pollution.

This report describes the results of a study of long-term effects of PM components in the American Cancer Society's Cancer Prevention Study II cohort; a time-series study of short-term effects of PM components on cardiovascular and other diseases in people living in 150 U.S. cities; and two toxicologic studies in animals exposed by inhalation to concentrated ambient particles, and in animals and human cells exposed to particles collected on filters from five different airsheds across the United States. This report, along with Research Report 178 (Vedal et al.), is one of HEI's National Particle Component Toxicity (NPACT) studies, which describe the most systematic multidisciplinary studies to date to investigate the health effects of PM components in humans and animal models at locations across the United States where the effects of PM sources and components may differ. The report includes a Commentary and a Synthesis by the NPACT Review Panel.