Dutch Study Confirms that Long-Term Exposures to Particulate Matter are Deadly
This long-term cohort study confirms the findings of the Harvard Six Cities Study and the study of the American Cancer Society Cohort that found an association between chronic exposure to particulate air pollution and shortened life expectancy.
Investigators assessed the association between long-term exposure to traffic-related air pollution and cause-specific mortality in a cohort of 4,500 elderly people, participants in the ongoing Netherlands Cohort study on Diet and Cancer. People who lived near major roads had a 95 percent greater risk of dying early from cardiopulmonary causes than people living in cleaner air areas.
Hoek, G., Brunekreef, B., Goldbohm, S., Fischer, P., and van den Brandt, P. A. Association Between Mortality and Indicators of Traffic-Related Air Pollution in the Netherlands: A Cohort Study. The Lancet. Vol. 360, pp. 1203-1209, October 19, 2002.
The National Library of Medicine [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/] offers the abstract online.
