Negative studies and PM2.5

Courtesy of Stan Young, below is a (growing) list of published papers that report no association between PM2.5 and mortality.

But first, a word on negative papers:

Negative papers are important.

You can get a positive paper in a number of ways.

• The reported effect is real. People usually think this is the most likely thing. In many areas of science, claimed effects only replicate 10-20% of the time.
• The reported is spurious. A statistical false positive due to chance.
• The reported effect is fraud. A positive due to data and/or analysis manipulation (e.g., p-hacking or trying multiple models and selecting the one you like.)

Negative papers are a counter weight to positive papers, BUT they are very difficult to get published.

• The researcher may give up – the file drawer problem.
• Editors don’t like negative papers — publication bias.
• Referees don’t like papers against what they might have published.
• Researchers might think it through. If I publish a negative paper, it will be difficult to ask for follow up funding on this question!

Logic. It takes only one valid negative paper to end the claim of causality.

Attached find a list of negative papers in the area of air quality and health effects.

1. Styer, P., McMillan, N., Gao, F., Davis, J., Sacks, J., 1995. Effect of outdoor airborne particulate matter on daily death counts. Environ. Health Perspect. 103:490-497.
2. Chay K, Dobkin C, Greenstone M. 2003. The Clean Air Act of 1970 and adult mortality. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty 27:279–300.
3. Enstrom JE. 2005. Fine particulate air pollution and total mortality among elderly Californians, 1973–2002. Inhalation Toxicology 17:803–816.
4. Janes H, Dominici F, Zeger S. 2007. Trends in air pollution and mortality: An approach to the assessment of unmeasured confounding. Epidemiology, 2007; 18:416–423.
5. Smith RL, Xu B, Switzer PP. 2009. Reassessing the relationship between ozone and short-term mortality in U.S. urban communities, Inhal Toxicol 29(S2):37–61.
6. Berglind N, Ljungman P, Möller J, Hallqvist J, Nyberg N, Rosenqvist M, Pershagen G, Bellander T. 2010. Air Pollution Exposure—A Trigger for Myocardial Infarction? Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 7(4):1486-1499; doi:10.3390/ijerph7041486
7. Greven S, Dominici F, Zeger S. 2011. An approach to the estimation of chronic air pollution effects using spatio-temporal information. Journal of the American Statistical Association 106:396–406.
8. Krstic G. 2012. A reanalysis of fine particulate matter air pollution versus life expectancy in the United States, J Air Waste Manage Assoc. 62:989–991.
9. Young SS, Xia JQ. 2013. Assessing geographic heterogeneity and variable importance in an air pollution data set. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining 6:375–386.
10. Cox LA Jr, Popken DA, Ricci PF. 2013. Warmer is healthier: Effects on mortality rates of changes in average fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations and temperatures in 100 U.S. cities. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology. 66:336–346.
11. Milojevic, A., Wilkinson, P., Armstrong, B., Bhaskaran, K., Smeeth, L., Hajat, S., 2014. Short-term effects of air pollution on a range of cardiovascular events in England and Wales: case-crossover analysis of the MINAP database, hospital admissions and mortality. Heart 100:1093-1098.
12. Young, S.S., Fogel, P., 2014. Air pollution and daily deaths in California. In: Proceedings, 2014 Discovery Summit. https://community.jmp.com/docs/DOC-6691/.
13. Atkinson RW, Carey IM, Kent AJ, et al. 2015. Long-term exposure to outdoor air pollution and the incidence of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in a national English cohort. Occup Environ Med 2015;72:42–48. doi:10.1136/oemed-2014-102266.
14. Wang X, Kindzierski W, Kaul P. 2015. Comparison of transient associations of air pollution and AMI hospitalisation in two cities of Alberta, Canada, using a case-crossover design. BMJ Open. 5(11): e009169. (PMID:26553835 PMCID:pmc4654281)
15. Lopiano KK, Smith RL, Young SS. 2015. Air quality and acute deaths in California, 2000-2012. https://arxiv.org/abs/1502.03062
16. Young SS, Obenchain RL, Krstic G. 2015. Local Control Analysis of Radon and Ozone. Discovery Summit 2015. https://community.jmp.com/docs/DOC-7784
17. Zu, K., Tao, G., Long, C., Goodman, J., Valberg, P., 2016. Long-range fine particulate matter from the 2002 Quebec forest fires and daily mortality in Greater Boston and New York City. Air Qual. Atmos. Health 9:213-221.
18. Young SS, Obenchain RL, Lambert CG. 2016. A problem of bias and response heterogeneity. Chapter 8. In Standing with Giants: A Collection of Public Health Essays in Memoriam to Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan. American Council on Science and Health.
19. Young SS. 2017. Air quality environmental epidemiology studies are unreliable. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 88:177-180.
20. Vanasse A, Talbot D, Chebana F, Bélanger D, Blais C, Gamache P, Giroux J-X, Dault R, Pierre Gosselin P. 2017. Effects of climate and fine particulate matter on hospitalizations and deaths for heart failure in elderly: A population-based cohort study. Environment International 106:257–266.
21. Young SS, Smith RL, Lopiano KK. 2017. Air quality and acute deaths in California, 2000-2012. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 88:173-184.
22. Enstrom JE. 2017. Fine particulate matter and total mortality in Cancer Prevention Study cohort reanalysis. Dose-Response: An International Journal. 2017:1-12.
23. Obenchain RL, Young SS. Local Control strategy: Simple analyses of air pollution data can reveal heterogeneity in longevity outcomes. Risk Analysis 37(9):1742-1753.
24. You C, Lin DJK, Young SS. (In Press) PM2.5 and ozone, indicators of air quality, and acute deaths in California. Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology.
25. You C, Lin DJK, Young SS. 2018. Time series smoother for effect detection. PLoS ONE 13 (4): e0195360. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0195360