Photo: UNEP
Here is yet another study – a 16-yearlong one and involving experts from various (and utterly prestigious) universities and institutes that concludes with the reasoning that air pollution can be linked to higher chances of premature death. Yes, and we are not going to try and talk senses into all those people thinking even this global health crisis is bogus as well.
Instead, we are simply going to comment and relate the cold facts. As observed in between 2000 and 2016 by authors X. Wu, D. Braun and their colleagues on a total of 68.5 million U.S. Medicare enrollees – and compiled at the end into no less than 570 million observations.
The study was published in Science Advances at the end of June by the researchers from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the two working alongside colleagues from Harvard, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York.
Basically, the authors started with the knowledge that numerous prior scientific studies have corelated the long-term fine particle (PM2.5) exposure to increased risk of mortality – but they’ve all been heavily disputed, including with arguments that seem well-established within its own scientific base (the old trope that classic statistical approaches do not support the evidence of causality).
Starting from there, their own conclusions seem to provide a strong basis towards understanding there’s a causal link in the relationship between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) long term exposure (aka air pollution) and premature deaths among elderly people.
To combat detractors, the study resorted to five distinct statistical approaches, and at the end of the 16-yearlong period the researchers found that lowering the fine particulate matter levels (the current U.S. air quality standards are set at 2 μg/m3) to just 10 μg/m3 PM2.5 would decrease the danger level - mortality risk – by 6 to 7%.
Basically, the Harvard researchers think that if the U.S. would drop the air quality standard to 10 μg/m3 it would enable significant life saves – almost 144k – over the course of a decade. And the authors only looked at 16 years of data for elderly people – their study encompassed 68.5 million Medicare health insured – basically 97% of Americans above 65. Imagine how much data they could extract if they tracked other age brackets as well!
The study was published in Science Advances at the end of June by the researchers from Harvard University’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, the two working alongside colleagues from Harvard, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, New York.
Basically, the authors started with the knowledge that numerous prior scientific studies have corelated the long-term fine particle (PM2.5) exposure to increased risk of mortality – but they’ve all been heavily disputed, including with arguments that seem well-established within its own scientific base (the old trope that classic statistical approaches do not support the evidence of causality).
Starting from there, their own conclusions seem to provide a strong basis towards understanding there’s a causal link in the relationship between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) long term exposure (aka air pollution) and premature deaths among elderly people.
To combat detractors, the study resorted to five distinct statistical approaches, and at the end of the 16-yearlong period the researchers found that lowering the fine particulate matter levels (the current U.S. air quality standards are set at 2 μg/m3) to just 10 μg/m3 PM2.5 would decrease the danger level - mortality risk – by 6 to 7%.
Basically, the Harvard researchers think that if the U.S. would drop the air quality standard to 10 μg/m3 it would enable significant life saves – almost 144k – over the course of a decade. And the authors only looked at 16 years of data for elderly people – their study encompassed 68.5 million Medicare health insured – basically 97% of Americans above 65. Imagine how much data they could extract if they tracked other age brackets as well!
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