GEOG 221 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Urban Air, American Cancer Society, Rush Hour
13 Mar 2016
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Lecture #9: air pollution and human health continued. When the risk is the same for the exposed and unexposed groups, the relative risk is 1 (aka no increased risk of exposure). 1, meaning we can"t be sure statistically if it is a null event). Key findings were that mortality rates were most strongly associated with smoking but they did find consistent results for an effect of air pollution. Studies must account for confounding factors e. g. the social-demographic make up of a population (sex, age, socio-economic status (ses), smoker, occupation ) Has to look at the way different pollutants interact, or how pollutants interact with different meteorological conditions. Must account for potential omitted variable bias. When they were going into the field in the early 1980s, they were looking at dietary fat, exercise, smoking habits as they effect cancer rates and general population health, but it wasn"t concerned with air pollution.
