Cohort-based long-term ozone exposure-associated mortality risks with adjusted metrics: A systematic review and meta-analysis.
Authors
Change log
Abstract
Long-term ozone (O3) exposure may lead to non-communicable diseases and increase mortality risk. However, cohort-based studies are relatively rare, and inconsistent exposure metrics impair the credibility of epidemiological evidence synthetization. To provide more accurate meta-estimations, this study updates existing systematic reviews by including recent studies and summarizing the quantitative associations between O3 exposure and cause-specific mortality risks, based on unified exposure metrics. Cross-metric conversion factors were estimated linearly by decadal observations during 1990-2019. The Hunter-Schmidt random-effects estimator was applied to pool the relative risks. A total of 25 studies involving 226,453,067 participants (14 unique cohorts covering 99,855,611 participants) were included in the systematic review. After linearly unifying the inconsistent O3 exposure metrics , the pooled relative risks associated with every 10 nmol mol-1 (ppbV) incremental O3 exposure, by mean of the warm-season daily maximum 8-h average metric, were as follows: 1.014 with 95% confidence interval (CI) ranging 1.009-1.019 for all-cause mortality; 1.025 (95% CI: 1.010-1.040) for respiratory mortality; 1.056 (95% CI: 1.029-1.084) for COPD mortality; 1.019 (95% CI: 1.004-1.035) for cardiovascular mortality; and 1.074 (95% CI: 1.054-1.093) for congestive heart failure mortality. Insignificant mortality risk associations were found for ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular diseases, and lung cancer. Adjustment for exposure metrics laid a solid foundation for multi-study meta-analysis, and widening coverage of surface O3 observations is expected to strengthen the cross-metric conversion in the future. Ever-growing numbers of epidemiological studies supported the evidence for considerable cardiopulmonary hazards and all-cause mortality risks from long-term O3 exposure. However, evidence of long-term O3 exposure-associated health effects was still scarce, so more relevant studies are needed to cover more populations with regional diversity.
Publication Date
Online Publication Date
Acceptance Date
Keywords
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
2666-6758
Volume Title
Publisher
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/S022961/1)