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Open Access 01-04-2016 | Letter to the Editor

Response to “Quantifying the health impacts of ambient air pollutants: methodological errors must be avoided”

Authors: Marie-Eve Héroux, Bert Brunekreef, H. Ross Anderson, Richard Atkinson, Aaron Cohen, Francesco Forastiere, Fintan Hurley, Klea Katsouyanni, Daniel Krewski, Michal Krzyzanowski, Nino Künzli, Inga Mills, Xavier Querol, Bart Ostro, Heather Walton

Published in: International Journal of Public Health | Issue 3/2016

Excerpt

We thank Morfeld and Erren for their interest in our recent publication on “Quantifying the health impacts of ambient air pollutants: recommendations of a WHO/Europe project” (Héroux et al. 2015). Morfeld and Erren claim that there are potential problems with the statistical approach used in our paper to measure the impact on mortality from air pollution. In fact, they state that “Greenland showed that a calculation based on RR estimates, as performed in the EU research project, does estimate excess cases numbers—but it does not estimate the number of premature cases or etiological cases” (Greenland 1999). …

Brunekreef B (1997) Air pollution and life expectancy: is there a relation? Occup Environ Med 54:781–784. doi:10.1136/oem.54.11.781 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Brunekreef B, Miller BG, Hurley JF (2007) The brave new world of lives sacrificed and saved, deaths attributed and avoided. Epidemiology 18(6):785–788CrossRefPubMed

Erren TC, Morfeld P (2011) Attributing the burden of cancer at work: three areas of concern when examining the example of shift-work. Epidemiol Perspect Innov 8:4. http://biomedcentral.com/1742-5573/8/4

Greenland S (1999) Relation of probability of causation to relative risk and doubling dose: a methodologic error that has become a social problem. Am J Public Health 89:1166–1169CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Héroux ME et al (2015) Quantifying the health impacts of ambient air pollutants: recommendations of a WHO/Europe project. Int J Public Health 60:619–6272CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Miller B, Hurley JF (2003) Life table methods for quantitative impact assessments in chronic mortality. J Epidemiol Community Health 57:200–206. doi:10.1136/jech.57.3.200 CrossRefPubMedPubMedCentral

Title: Response to “Quantifying the health impacts of ambient air pollutants: methodological errors must be avoided”
Authors: Marie-Eve Héroux
Bert Brunekreef
H. Ross Anderson
Richard Atkinson
Aaron Cohen
Francesco Forastiere
Fintan Hurley
Klea Katsouyanni
Daniel Krewski
Michal Krzyzanowski
Nino Künzli
Inga Mills
Xavier Querol
Bart Ostro
Heather Walton
Publication date: 01-04-2016
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Published in: International Journal of Public Health / Issue 3/2016
Print ISSN: 1661-8556
Electronic ISSN: 1661-8564
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-016-0808-x

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Response to “Quantifying the health impacts of ambient air pollutants: methodological errors must be avoided”

Excerpt

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