Single pollutant versus surrogate measure approaches: do single pollutant risk assessments underestimate the impact of air pollution on lung cancer risk?
Cancer risk as a result of air pollution may be quantified by different approaches. We compared the sum of unit risk based effects of single pollutants with an epidemiology-based method by using PM(10) as a surrogate of the total air pollution. The excess rate for lung cancer cases attributable to an increase of 10 microg/m3 in average PM(10) exposure was estimated from available cohort studies. Applying the epidemiology-based risk method to the air pollution situation in the Basel area (Switzerland) resulted in 13.3 (95% CI = 6.9-19.8) excess lung cancer cases per 100,000 person years. This estimate was considerably higher than the unit risk-based estimate yielding 1.1 (range, 0.45-2.8) cancer cases per 100,000 person years. We discuss these discrepancies in light of inherent differences between approaches in toxicology and epidemiology.
Röösli
Martin
M
Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland. Roeoesli@ispm.unibe.ch
Künzli
Nino
N
Schindler
Christian
C
Theis
Gaston
G
Oglesby
Lucy
L
Mathys
Patrick
P
Camenzind
Markus
M
Braun-Fahrländer
Charlotte
C
D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000145:classification / Q000633:toxicity*; D000397:Air Pollution / Q000009:adverse effects*; D016021:Epidemiologic Studies; D006801:Humans; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000139:chemically induced* / Q000453:epidemiology; D018570:Risk Assessment / Q000379:methods*; D013557:Switzerland / Q000453:epidemiology
D000393:Air Pollutants