The health effects of traffic-related air pollution (TRAP) continue to be of important public health interest. Following its well-cited 2010 critical review, the Health Effects Institute (HEI) ...appointed a new expert Panel to systematically evaluate the epidemiological evidence regarding the associations between long-term exposure to TRAP and selected adverse health outcomes. Health outcomes were selected based on evidence of causality for general air pollution (broader than TRAP) cited in authoritative reviews, relevance for public health and policy, and resources available.
The Panel used a systematic approach to search the literature, select studies for inclusion in the review, assess study quality, summarize results, and reach conclusions about the confidence in the evidence. An extensive search was conducted of literature published between January 1980 and July 2019 on selected health outcomes. A new exposure framework was developed to determine whether a study was sufficiently specific to TRAP.
In total, 353 studies were included in the review. Respiratory effects in children (118 studies) and birth outcomes (86 studies) were the most commonly studied outcomes. Fewer studies investigated cardiometabolic effects (57 studies), respiratory effects in adults (50 studies), and mortality (48 studies).
The findings from the systematic review, meta-analyses, and evaluation of the quality of the studies and potential biases provided an overall high or moderate-to-high level of confidence in an association between long-term exposure to TRAP and the adverse health outcomes all-cause, circulatory, ischemic heart disease and lung cancer mortality, asthma onsetin chilldren and adults, and acute lower respiratory infections in children. The evidence was considered moderate, low or very low for the other selected outcomes.
In light of the large number of people exposed to TRAP – both in and beyond the near-road environment - the Panel concluded that the overall high or moderate-to-high confidence in the evidence for an association between long-term exposure to TRAP and several adverse health outcomes indicates that exposures to TRAP remain an important public health concern and deserve greater attention from the public and from policymakers.
This paper presents the results of international precipitation measurement intercomparisons organized by the World Meteorological Organization between 1955 and 2008. They have focussed on the impact ...of wind, evaporation and other systematic error sources on rain, snow and precipitation intensity measurement using standard gauges and different types of tipping-bucket and weighing gauges. The application of the results of WMO intercomparisons represents the state-of-the-art of precipitation measurements and the ultimate step to increase the reliability of point precipitation measurements and hydrological studies. It indicates that missing correction application makes any intercomparison measurements using different precipitation gauges 50 years behind the age and in any case, their results questionable.
Paired elevated and ground level recording precipitation gauges of the electronic weighing type with a resolution of 0.01 mm/min were tested during the 3-year field experiments at two sites in ...Slovakia. The wind-induced loss, defined as the difference between the ground level and the elevated gauge measurements, is related to the average wind speed and the average intensity of precipitation during a particular time interval. Two intervals of 15 and 60 min of total number of 1611 and 736 precipitation events, respectively, were used in the analysis. The events are divided according to the type of clouds into two groups. The cumuliform cloud group is representative for heavy (convective) precipitation and the stratiform cloud group for all other types of (non-convective) precipitation. The results show a non-linear dependence of the wind-induced loss on intensity of precipitation and wind speed. The wind-induced losses are smaller for the convective precipitation as compared with the non-convective precipitation. There are also differences between the results for the two time intervals. The smaller interval shows larger wind-induced losses than the greater one. The results agree well with the previous findings of the authors and these obtained by the numerical simulation. Using a threshold value of precipitation intensity
i
≤
8 mm h
−1 instead of the cloud genesis to separate the non-convective precipitation from the convective one resulted in different wind-induced losses for the group of so defined “non-convective” precipitation. The wind-induced losses differ by up to ±
15%.
PittUDT, a recursive partitioning decision tree algorithm for predicting urine culture (UC) positivity based on macroscopic and microscopic urinalysis (UA) parameters, was developed in support of a ...broader system-wide diagnostic stewardship initiative to increase appropriateness of UC testing. Reflex algorithm training utilized results from 19,511 paired UA and UC cases (26.8% UC positive); the average patient age was 57.4 years, and 70% of samples were from female patients. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis identified urine white blood cells (WBCs), leukocyte esterase, and bacteria as the best predictors of UC positivity, with areas under the ROC curve of 0.79, 0.78, and 0.77, respectively. Using the held-out test data set (9,773 cases; 26.3% UC positive), the PittUDT algorithm met the prespecified target of a negative predictive value above 90% and resulted in a 30 to 60% total negative proportion (true-negative plus false-negative predictions). These data show that a supervised rule-based machine learning algorithm trained on paired UA and UC data has adequate predictive ability for triaging urine specimens by identifying low-risk urine specimens, which are unlikely to grow pathogenic organisms, with a false-negative proportion under 5%. The decision tree approach also generates human-readable rules that can be easily implemented across multiple hospital sites and settings. Our work demonstrates how a data-driven approach can be used to optimize UA parameters for predicting UC positivity in a reflex protocol, with the intent of improving antimicrobial stewardship and UC utilization, a potential avenue for cost savings.
PurposePuerto Rican children experience high rates of asthma and obesity. Further, infants born in Puerto Rico are more at risk for being born prematurely compared with infants on the mainland USA. ...Environmental exposures from multiple sources during critical periods of child development, potentially modified by psychosocial factors, may contribute to these adverse health outcomes. To date, most studies investigating the health effects of environmental factors on infant and child health have focused on single or individual exposures.ParticipantsInfants currently in gestation whose mother is enrolled in Puerto Rico Testsite for Exploring Contamination Threats (PROTECT) cohort, and infants and children already born to mothers who participated in the PROTECT study.Findings to dateData collection and processing remains ongoing. Demographic data have been collected on 437 mother–child pairs. Birth outcomes are available for 420 infants, neurodevelopmental outcomes have been collected on 319 children. Concentrations of parabens and phenols in maternal spot urine samples have been measured from 386 mothers. Center for Research on Early Childhood Exposure and Development mothers have significantly higher urinary concentrations of dichlorophenols, triclosan and triclocarban, but lower levels of several parabens compared with reference values from a similar population drawn from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.Future plansData will continue to be collected through recruitment of new births with a target of 600 children. Seven scheduled follow-up visits with existing and new participants are planned. Further, our research team continues to work with healthcare providers, paediatricians and early intervention providers to support parent’s ability to access early intervention services for participants.
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