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The relevance of commuter and work/school exposure in an epidemiological study on traffic-related air pollution

Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology volume 25, pages 474–481 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Exposure during transport and at non-residential locations is ignored in most epidemiological studies of traffic-related air pollution. We investigated the impact of separately estimating NO2 long-term outdoor exposures at home, work/school, and while commuting on the association between this marker of exposure and potential health outcomes. We used spatially and temporally resolved commuter route data and model-based NO2 estimates of a population sample in Basel, Switzerland, to assign individual NO2-exposure estimates of increasing complexity, namely (1) home outdoor concentration; (2) time-weighted home and work/school concentrations; and (3) time-weighted concentration incorporating home, work/school and commute. On the basis of their covariance structure, we estimated the expectable relative differences in the regression slopes between a quantitative health outcome and our measures of individual NO2 exposure using a standard measurement error model. The traditional use of home outdoor NO2 alone indicated a 12% (95% CI: 11–14%) underestimation of related health effects as compared with integrating both home and work/school outdoor concentrations. Mean contribution of commuting to total weekly exposure was small (3.2%; range 0.1–13.5%). Thus, ignoring commute in the total population may not significantly underestimate health effects as compared with the model combining home and work/school. For individuals commuting between Basel-City and Basel-Country, ignoring commute may produce, however, a significant attenuation bias of 4% (95% CI: 4–5%). Our results illustrate the importance of including work/school locations in assessments of long-term exposures to traffic-related air pollutants such as NO2. Information on individuals’ commuting behavior may further improve exposure estimates, especially for subjects having lengthy commutes along major transportation routes.

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Acknowledgements

This work is part of a Europe-wide project, Transportation Air Pollution and Physical Activities (TAPAS), which is an integrated health risk assessment program on climate change and urban policies. The study is partially supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF 324730_135673). We acknowledge the Federal Office for the Environment for supplying the fixed site measurement data and the NO2 model PolluMap. We are thankful to the Federal Statistical Office of Switzerland for providing the census data.

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Author notes

  1. Martina S Ragettli and Harish C Phuleria: These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel, Switzerland

    Martina S Ragettli, Harish C Phuleria, Ming-Yi Tsai, Christian Schindler, Regina E Ducret-Stich, Alex Ineichen, Laura Perez, Charlotte Braun-Fahrländer, Nicole Probst-Hensch & Nino Künzli

  2. University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Martina S Ragettli, Harish C Phuleria, Ming-Yi Tsai, Christian Schindler, Regina E Ducret-Stich, Alex Ineichen, Laura Perez, Charlotte Braun-Fahrländer, Nicole Probst-Hensch & Nino Künzli

  3. Centre for Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

    Harish C Phuleria

  4. Centre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College, London, UK

    Audrey de Nazelle

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  1. Martina S Ragettli
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  2. Harish C Phuleria
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Correspondence to Martina S Ragettli.

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Supplementary Information accompanies the paper on the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology website

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Ragettli, M., Phuleria, H., Tsai, MY. et al. The relevance of commuter and work/school exposure in an epidemiological study on traffic-related air pollution. J Expo Sci Environ Epidemiol 25, 474–481 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/jes.2014.83

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