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. 2023 May 2;57(17):6835-6843.
doi: 10.1021/acs.est.2c07064. Epub 2023 Apr 19.

National Cohort Study of Long-Term Exposure to PM2.5 Components and Mortality in Medicare American Older Adults

Hua Hao  1 , Yifan Wang  1 , Qiao Zhu  1 , Haisu Zhang  1 , Andrew Rosenberg  1 , Joel Schwartz  2   3 , Heresh Amini  4 , Aaron van Donkelaar  5 , Randall Martin  5 , Pengfei Liu  6 , Rodney Weber  6 , Armistead Russel  6 , Maayan Yitshak-Sade  7 , Howard Chang  8 , Liuhua Shi  1
Affiliations

National Cohort Study of Long-Term Exposure to PM2.5 Components and Mortality in Medicare American Older Adults

Hua Hao et al. Environ Sci Technol. .

Abstract

There is increasing evidence linking long-term fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure to negative health effects. However, the relative influence of each component of PM2.5 on health risk is poorly understood. In a cohort study in the contiguous United States between 2000 and 2017, we examined the effect of long-term exposure to PM2.5 main components and all-cause mortality in older adults who had to be at least 65 years old and enrolled in Medicare. We estimated the yearly mean concentrations of six key PM2.5 compounds, including black carbon (BC), organic matter (OM), soil dust (DUST), nitrate (NO3-), sulfate (SO42-), and ammonium (NH4+), using two independently sourced well-validated prediction models. We applied Cox proportional hazard models to evaluate the hazard ratios for mortality and penalized splines for assessing potential nonlinear concentration-response associations. Results suggested that increased exposure to PM2.5 mass and its six main constituents were significantly linked to elevated all-cause mortality. All components showed linear concentration-response relationships in the low exposure concentration ranges. Our research indicates that long-term exposure to PM2.5 mass and its essential compounds are strongly connected to increased mortality risk. Reductions of fossil fuel burning may yield significant air quality and public health benefit.

Keywords: PM2.5 components; air pollution; all-cause mortality; survival analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Average concentrations of PM2.5 major components (μg/m3) over the contiguous United States from 2000 to 2017 as calculated by Exposure I (van Donkelaar et al., 2019) (a) and Exposure II (Amini et al., 2022) (b).
Figure 2
Figure 2
HRs of mortality linked with per IQR (a) or per 1 μg/m3 (b) increase in annual mean concentration of each PM2.5 major component, respectively, including BC, OM, soil dust (DUST), nitrate (NO3–), sulfate (SO42–), and ammonium (NH4+). The dotted lines represent PM2.5 mass results. The error bars represent the 95% confidence intervals, while the calculated HRs were determined from single-component models. Air pollutants derived from two exposure models are distinguished using light and dark colors, with the light color denoting Exposure I data and the dark color denoting Exposure II data. Table S3 provides the corresponding hazard ratio values (model 1).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Concentration–response curves, derived from the single-component models, are displayed for the concentration ranges between the 1st to 99th percentiles of the pollutants, i.e., with 2% of the extreme values that are poorly constrained removed. For each component, the top panel shows the Exposure I result, and the bottom panel shows the Exposure II result.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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