Scientific efforts to understand the health effects of air pollution and public policy efforts to control air pollution have a fascinating history. The early “killer smog” episodes in Meuse Valley, Belgium (1930), Donora, Pa (1948), and London, UK (1952) provided stark evidence of deleterious respiratory and cardiovascular health effects of severe air pollution exposure. This evidence motivated...

Industrial pollution was endemic to the industrial cities of the 19th century and remains a feature of some modern cities, particularly industrial cities in emerging economies. This study compares the relationship between pollution and mortality in both the historical and modern context, focusing on English cities in the mid-19th century and Chinese cities in 2000. For both contexts, we constru...

An important aspect of the new sustainable development goals (SDGs) is a greater emphasis on reducing the health impacts from ambient air pollution in developing countries. Meanwhile, the burden of human disease attributable to ambient air pollution in sub-Saharan Africa is growing, yet estimates of its impact on the region are possibly underestimated due to a lack of air quality monitoring, a ...

The current air quality limit values for airborne pollutants in the UK are low by historical standards and are at levels that are believed not to harm health. We assess whether this view is correct. We examine the relationship between common sources of airborne pollution and population mortality for England. We use data at local authority level for 1998 to 2005 to examine whether current levels...

BACKGROUND There is concern that, despite the fall in air pollution levels since the 1950s, there may still be adverse effects at current levels. A study was carried out to investigate the association between air pollution and respiratory symptoms in 23 year old subjects in 1981. METHODS Data on cough, phlegm, and wheeze were available on 11,552 members of the 1958 national birth cohort. Coun...

The current air quality limit values for airborne pollutants in the UK are low by historical standards and are at levels that are believed not to harm health. We assess whether this view is correct. We examine the relationship between common sources of airborne pollution and population mortality for England. We use data at local authority level for 1998-2005 to examine whether current levels of...

earthworms are an important part of food chain in soil ecosystem. in polluted soils, heavy metals are consumed by earthworms and transferred to other organisms through food chain, resulting in many adverse health impacts. due to the benefits of earthworms for soil fertility, it is important to assess the effects of soil pollution on population, biomass and functions of earthworms. to determine ...

OBJECTIVE To investigate reproducibility of outcomes for short-term associations between ambient air pollutants and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) hospitalisation in 2 urban populations. DESIGN Using a time-stratified design, we conducted independent case-crossover studies of AMI hospitalisation events over the period 1999-2010 in the geographically close and demographically similar cities...

BACKGROUND Cross-sectional and ecological studies indicate that air pollution may be a risk factor for type 2 diabetes, but prospective data are lacking. OBJECTIVE We examined the association between traffic-related air pollution and incident type 2 diabetes. DESIGN Between 1985 and 1994, cross-sectional surveys were performed in the highly industrialized Ruhr district (West Germany); a fol...

Previous research shows poorer birth outcomes for racial and ethnic minorities and for persons with low socioeconomic status (SES). We evaluated whether mothers in groups at higher risk for poor birth outcomes live in areas of higher air pollution and whether higher exposure to air pollution contributes to poor birth outcomes. An index representing long-term exposure to criteria air pollutants ...