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Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and bladder cancer incidence in a pooled European cohort: the ELAPSE project

British Journal of Cancer volume 126, pages 1499–1507 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

Background

The evidence linking ambient air pollution to bladder cancer is limited and mixed.

Methods

We assessed the associations of bladder cancer incidence with residential exposure to fine particles (PM2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), black carbon (BC), warm season ozone (O3) and eight PM2.5 elemental components (copper, iron, potassium, nickel, sulfur, silicon, vanadium, and zinc) in a pooled cohort (N = 302,493). Exposures were primarily assessed based on 2010 measurements and back-extrapolated to the baseline years. We applied Cox proportional hazard models adjusting for individual- and area-level potential confounders.

Results

During an average of 18.2 years follow-up, 967 bladder cancer cases occurred. We observed a positive though statistically non-significant association between PM2.5 and bladder cancer incidence. Hazard Ratios (HR) were 1.09 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.93–1.27) per 5 µg/m3 for 2010 exposure and 1.06 (95% CI: 0.99–1.14) for baseline exposure. Effect estimates for NO2, BC and O3 were close to unity. A positive association was observed with PM2.5 zinc (HR 1.08; 95% CI: 1.00–1.16 per 10 ng/m3).

Conclusions

We found suggestive evidence of an association between long-term PM2.5 mass exposure and bladder cancer, strengthening the evidence from the few previous studies. The association with zinc in PM2.5 suggests the importance of industrial emissions.

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Fig. 1: Exposure distribution (corresponding values shown in Table S1).

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Data availability

The exposure maps are available on request from Dr Kees de Hoogh (c.dehoogh@swisstph.ch). The cohort data could only be pooled for the ELAPSE framework but is not available for sharing due to strict national data protection regulations and the General Data Protection Regulation of the European Union. The ELAPSE study protocol is available at http://www.elapseproject.eu/. A detailed statistical analysis plan is available on reasonable request from the corresponding author (j.chen1@uu.nl).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Marjan Tewis for the data management tasks in creating the pooled cohort database.

Funding

The research described in this article was conducted under contract to the Health Effects Institute (HEI), an organisation jointly funded by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) (Assistance Award No. R-82811201) and certain motor vehicle and engine manufacturers. The contents of this article do not necessarily reflect the views of HEI, or its sponsors, nor do they necessarily reflect the views and policies of the EPA or motor vehicle and engine manufacturers.

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Ole Raaschou-Nielsen, Gerard Hoek.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands

    Jie Chen, Maciej Strak, Bert Brunekreef & Gerard Hoek

  2. Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, Medical School, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Sophia Rodopoulou, Klea Katsouyanni & Evangelia Samoli

  3. National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands

    Maciej Strak & W. M. Monique Verschuren

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

    Kees de Hoogh

  5. University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

    Kees de Hoogh

  6. Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Tahir Taj, Aslak Harbo Poulsen, Ulla Arthur Hvidtfeldt, Mette Sørensen, Anne Tjønneland & Ole Raaschou-Nielsen

  7. Section of Environment and Health, Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Zorana J. Andersen, Jeanette T. Jørgensen & Shuo Liu

  8. Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Tom Bellander, Karin Leander, Petter Ljungman, Göran Pershagen & Massimo Stafoggia

  9. Centre for Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Region Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden

    Tom Bellander & Göran Pershagen

  10. Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Jørgen Brandt, Matthias Ketzel & Ole Raaschou-Nielsen

  11. iClimate – interdisciplinary Centre for Climate Change, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Jørgen Brandt

  12. Agency for Preventive and Social Medicine (aks), Bregenz, Austria

    Emanuel Zitt

  13. Department of Internal Medicine 3, LKH Feldkirch, Feldkirch, Austria

    Emanuel Zitt

  14. MRC Centre for Environment and Health, School of Public Health, Imperial College London, London, UK

    Daniela Fecht, John Gulliver & Klea Katsouyanni

  15. Department of Epidemiology, Lazio Region Health Service/ASL Roma 1, Rome, Italy

    Francesco Forastiere & Massimo Stafoggia

  16. Environmental Research Group, School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College, London, UK

    Francesco Forastiere

  17. Centre for Environmental Health and Sustainability & School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

    John Gulliver

  18. Departments of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Ole Hertel

  19. Institute for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, Centre for Health and Society, Medical Faculty, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Barbara Hoffmann

  20. Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands

    W. M. Monique Verschuren & Yvonne T. van der Schouw

  21. Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, United Kingdom

    Matthias Ketzel

  22. Department of Global Public Health, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Anton Lager

  23. Department of Cardiology, Danderyd University Hospital, Stockholm, Sweden

    Petter Ljungman

  24. University Paris-Saclay, UVSQ, Inserm, Gustave Roussy, “Exposome and Heredity” team, CESP UMR1018, 94805, Villejuif, France

    Gianluca Severi & Marie-Christine Boutron-Ruault

  25. Department of Statistics, Computer Science and Applications “G. Parenti” (DISIA), University of Florence, Florence, Italy

    Gianluca Severi

  26. Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden

    Patrik K. E. Magnusson

  27. Institute of Epidemiology and Medical Biometry, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany

    Gabriele Nagel & Gudrun Weinmayr

  28. Institute of Epidemiology, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Neuherberg, Germany

    Annette Peters & Kathrin Wolf

  29. Chair of Epidemiology, Ludwig Maximilians Universität München, Munich, Germany

    Annette Peters

  30. Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences, and Society, Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

    Debora Rizzuto

  31. Stockholm Gerontology Research Center, Stockholm, Sweden

    Debora Rizzuto

  32. Department of Natural Science and Environment, Roskilde University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Mette Sørensen

  33. Diet, Genes and Environment (DGE), Bonn, Germany

    Anne Tjønneland

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  1. Jie Chen
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Contributions

GH, ORN and JC: study conceptualisation and design; GH and BB: principal investigators of the ELAPSE project; JC: statistical analysis and manuscript writing; GH, ORN and BB: supervision, manuscript review and editing; GH, BB, JC and MS: ELAPSE project coordination, preparing pooled data for analyses, and providing support with the access to pooled cohort data; SR, ES and KK: contribution of statistical analyses strategy and scripts for the statistical analyses; KdH, JC and GH: exposure assessment. All authors contributed to the interpretation of the results. All authors read and revised the manuscript for the important intellectual content and approved the final draft of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jie Chen.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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This study involved no contact with members of the study population and the published results does not allow identification of individuals. The analyses were undertaken in a secure IT environment where no individual level data can be retrieved. All included cohort studies were approved by the medical ethics committees in their respective countries.

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Chen, J., Rodopoulou, S., Strak, M. et al. Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and bladder cancer incidence in a pooled European cohort: the ELAPSE project. Br J Cancer 126, 1499–1507 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-022-01735-4

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