INTRODUCTION Ambient particulate pollution and traffic have been linked to myocardial infarction and cardiac death risk. Possible mechanisms include autonomic cardiac dysfunction. METHODS In a repeated-measures study of 46 patients 43-75 years of age, we investigated associations of central-site ambient particulate pollution, including black carbon (BC) (a marker for regional and local traffi...

BACKGROUND Although the dispersion model approach has been used in some epidemiologic studies to examine health effects of traffic-specific air pollution, no study has evaluated the model predictions vigorously. METHODS We evaluated total and traffic-specific particulate matter < 10 and < 2.5 microm in aero-dynamic diameter (PM(10), PM(2.5)), nitrogren dioxide, and nitrogen oxide concentratio...

STUDY OBJECTIVE Studies in Europe and North America have reported that living in a disadvantaged neighbourhood is associated with an increased incidence of coronary heart disease. The aim of this study was to test the hypotheses that exposure to traffic and air pollution might account for some of the socioeconomic differences in mortality rates in a city where residents are covered by universal...

Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution increases disease risk in older adults. Nursing facilities located near major roadways potentially expose older adults to traffic pollution. No studies, however, have described the association between nursing facilities and traffic pollution. We obtained data on facility- and census-tract-level characteristics of 15,706 U.S. facilities from the Medica...

Over the last decades air pollution in the Alpine region has become an intensely debated subject at political and public levels. Clear evidence exists that heavy traffic along the major Alpine transport routes, such as the Brenner route through the Inn Valley (Austria) and over the Brenner Pass, has strongly contributed to the air pollution problem in Alpine valleys (e.g., Beauchamp et al., 200...

BACKGROUND Most studies having shown respiratory health effects from traffic exhaust were conducted in urban areas with a complex mixture of air pollution sources. This study has investigated the potential impact of traffic exhaust on respiratory symptoms among adults living along a Swiss alpine highway corridor, where traffic exhaust from the respective trans-Alpine highway is the predominate ...

This paper presents results of comprehensive analyses of data from the first 122 commercially available wireless environmental pervasive sensors (motes), developed by Newcastle University and deployed in England. Measurements of pollution, meteorology and traffic are used to investigate the complexity of the physical and chemical processes governing the levels of traffic-related pollution in ur...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association of different indices of traffic-related air pollution (self-report of traffic intensity, distance from busy roads from geographical information system (GIS), area-based emissions of particulate matter (PM), and estimated concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)) from a land-use regression model) with respiratory health in adults. METHODS A sample of 9488...

Thirty water-soluble organic species, including dicarboxylic acids, ketocarboxylic acids, α-dicarbonyls, fatty acids and benzoic acid were determined as well as organic carbon (OC), elemental carbon (EC) and water-soluble organic carbon (WSOC) in PM2.5 samples collected during the Campaign of Air Quality Research in Beijing 2007 (CAREBeijing-2007) in the urban and suburban areas of Beijing. The...

OBJECTIVE To utilize low-cost and simple methods to assess airway and lung inflammation biomarkers related to air pollution. METHODS A total of 87 male, non-smoking, healthy subjects working as street traffic-controllers or office-workers were examined to determine carbon monoxide in exhaled breath and to measure the pH in nasal lavage fluid and exhaled breath condensate. Air pollution exposu...