Re: Deaths from fossil fuel burning air pollution

[Bernard L Cohen <blc+@pitt.edu>]

On Mon, 20 Nov 2000, ruth_weiner wrote:

> I have another thought about this sort of "prospective epidemiology" (if I
> may coin a term).  Isn't epidemiology really (1) observing a health effect
> in a population (e.g., polio), (2) THEN looking for a correlation (e.g.,
> cases where there has been activity in crowded venues often involving water
> (public drinking fountains, public swimming pools), and (3) FINALLY looking
> for a cause (in this case, the polio virus)?  In these studies of "deaths"
> from air pollutants and for that matter from small amounts of ionizing
> radiation, isn't epidemiology being done backwards?  Don't we (1) identify
> something that might have a health effect and (2) then look for a population
> in which that health effect might occur, whether it is actually observed or
> not?

	--I don't see the problem here. We could say that (1) It has been
observed that some Metropolitan areas have higher cardiopulmonary
mortality rates than others; (2) We find that the differences correlate
strongly with air pollution levels; (3) In looking for a mechanism we can
cite many dozens of studies that show increased disease symptoms from air
pollution.

Bernard L. Cohen
Physics Dept.
University of Pittsburgh
Pittsburgh, PA 15260
Tel: (412)624-9245
Fax: (412)624-9163
e-mail: blc+@pitt.edu


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