Re: Deaths from fossil fuel burning air pollution

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

On Tue, 5 Dec 2000, Thomas J Savin wrote:

> It could be the stress level in the cities that make for the higher death rate - numerous studies have been performed in the area too.  What do you think?

	--How about stress levels among the Japanese A-bomb victims? Is
that considered?
	In the air pollution treatments, many potential confounding
factors are considered, and some of these would serve as surrogates for
stress -- like population density, % unemployment, % employed in
manufacturing, % employed in farming, etc.(The Pope study is of
Metropolitan areas, not of cities).

> On Wed, 29 Nov 2000 09:34:26  
>  Bernard L Cohen wrote:
> >
> >On Tue, 28 Nov 2000, ruth_weiner wrote:
> >> 
> >> This type of conversion factor is now being applied to inhaled air
> >> pollutants (and this is in fact an application of the LNT theory), which is
> >> quite a stretch, and which I myself do not agree with.
> >> 
> >> An air pollutant is defined in a number of laws and regulations as a
> >> substance other than nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, water vapor, ozone,
> >> and argon, or a significant quantities of a  substance like CO and some
> >> terpenes that may in very small quantities be constituents of clean air.
> >> Particulate matter is a pollutant whether it comes from a stack, is crustal
> >> dust, or comes from a volcanoic eruption.
> >
> >	--Here I define air pollution as things emitted from fossil fuel
> >burning, with very fine particulate (<1.5 miicron) serving as a surrogate.
> >How do you explain the fact that there is a statistically robust tendency
> >for areas with high air pollution to have higher mortality rates than
> >areas with low air pollution, after considering other factors that may be
> >relevant? No linear-no threshold assumption is involved; these are
> >straightforward data. Also, how do you explain the fact that in a given
> >city, mortality rates are higher when pollution is higher? Dozens of
> >studies have corroborated these findings.
> >	
> >
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