1996 Volume 6 Issue 4sup Pages 149-151
A direct impact on human health as a result of increasing atmospheric concentrations of C02 could be more frequent exposure to increased daily average surface temperatures and increased daily average atmospheric concentrations of air pollutants. These exposures would occur most often in urban areas. To evaluate the impact of the combined exposures to increasing temperatures and air pollutant concentrations on the risk of heat and air pollution mortality, a second moment reliability method of analysis was used. The method required distribution functions for mortality, temperature and air pollutant concentrations. To demonstrate how this method can be used to predict changes in mortality risk, data were used on cardiovascular and respiratory mortality, daily average temperatures and daily average air pollutant concentrations for the city of Los Angeles from 1970 to 1979. Using time-series analysis of these data, regression formulas for mortality for different ages groups were quadratic functions of temperature and linear functions of air pollutant concentrations. At fixed temperatures, the second moment method was used to show that specific reductions in mortality for all age groups could be achieved by specific reductions in air pollutant concentrations. This provides a method to evaluate mortality risk reductions of technologies being developed to mitigate climate change because reductions in atmospheric concentrations of C02 would usually be accompanied by decreasing concentrations of air pollutants. J Epidemiol, 1996 ; 6 : S149-Sl51.
