In:
PLOS Global Public Health, Public Library of Science (PLoS), Vol. 3, No. 8 ( 2023-8-2), p. e0002178-
Abstract:
Imposing stricter regulations for PM 2.5 has the potential to mitigate damaging health and climate change effects. Recent evidence establishing a link between exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 outcomes is one of many arguments for the need to reduce the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for PM 2.5 . However, many studies reporting a relationship between COVID-19 outcomes and PM 2.5 have been criticized because they are based on ecological regression analyses, where area-level counts of COVID-19 outcomes are regressed on area-level exposure to air pollution and other covariates. It is well known that regression models solely based on area-level data are subject to ecological bias, i.e., they may provide a biased estimate of the association at the individual-level, due to within-area variability of the data. In this paper, we augment county-level COVID-19 mortality data with a nationally representative sample of individual-level covariate information from the American Community Survey along with high-resolution estimates of PM 2.5 concentrations obtained from a validated model and aggregated to the census tract for the contiguous United States. We apply a Bayesian hierarchical modeling approach to combine county-, census tract-, and individual-level data to ultimately draw inference about individual-level associations between long-term exposure to PM 2.5 and mortality for COVID-19. By analyzing data prior to the Emergency Use Authorization for the COVID-19 vaccines we found that an increase of 1 μg / m 3 in long-term PM 2.5 exposure, averaged over the 17-year period 2000-2016, is associated with a 3.3% (95% credible interval, 2.8 to 3.8%) increase in an individual’s odds of COVID-19 mortality. Code to reproduce our study is publicly available at https://github.com/NSAPH/PM_COVID_ecoinference . The results confirm previous evidence of an association between long-term exposure to PM 2.5 and COVID-19 mortality and strengthen the case for tighter regulations on harmful air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
2767-3375
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pgph.0002178
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pgph.0002178.g001
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pgph.0002178.t001
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pgph.0002178.t002
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pgph.0002178.t003
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pgph.0002178.t004
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pgph.0002178.t005
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pgph.0002178.t006
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pgph.0002178.s001
DOI:
10.1371/journal.pgph.0002178.s002
Language:
English
Publisher:
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Publication Date:
2023
detail.hit.zdb_id:
3101394-6
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