ArticleEpidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.)2025
Long-term Associations Between Time-varying Exposure to Ambient PM 2.5 and Mortality: An Analysis of the UK Biobank.
Article in Epidemiology (Cambridge, Mass.), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Air pollution and breast cancer incidence in a United States-wide prospective cohort study: Examining sensitive periods of exposure.Environment international · 2025Article
- Association of air pollution exposure and genetic susceptibility with increased risk of thoracic aortic aneurysm and dissection.Nature cardiovascular research · 2025Article
- Confounding mechanisms and adjustment strategies in air pollution epidemiology: a case study assessment with the UK Biobank cohort.International journal of epidemiology · 2025Article
- Spatial patterns and temporal trends of tracheal, bronchus, and lung cancer attributed to particulate matter pollution in Asia and its 34 countries and territories, 1990-2021.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Artificial intelligence in maternal and child health: Current applications, translational gaps, and future research priorities.Women's health (London, England)Review
- MASLD Exacerbates Chronic Low-dose PMIn vivo (Athens, Greece)Article
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Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundEvidence for long-term mortality risks of PM 2.5 comes mostly from large administrative studies with incomplete individual information and limited exposure definitions. Here we assess PM 2.5 -mortality associations in the UK Biobank cohort using detailed information on confounders and exposure.
methodsWe reconstructed detailed exposure histories for 498,090 subjects by linking residential data with high-resolution PM 2.5 concentrations from spatiotemporal machine-learning models. We split the time-to-event data and assigned yearly exposures over a lag window of 8 years. We fitted Cox proportional hazard models with time-varying exposure controlling for contextual- and individual-level factors, as well as trends. In secondary analyses, we inspected the lag structure using distributed lag models and compared results with alternative exposure sources and definitions.
resultsIn fully adjusted models, an increase of 10 μg/m³ in PM 2.5 was associated with hazard ratios of 1.27 (95% confidence interval: 1.06, 1.53) for all-cause, 1.24 (1.03, 1.50) for nonaccidental, 2.07 (1.04, 4.10) for respiratory, and 1.66 (0.86, 3.19) for lung cancer mortality. We found no evidence of association with cardiovascular deaths (hazard ratio = 0.88, 95% confidence interval: 0.59, 1.31). We identified strong confounding by both contextual- and individual-level lifestyle factors. The distributed lag analysis suggested differences in relevant exposure windows across mortality causes. Using more informative exposure summaries and sources resulted in higher risk estimates.
conclusionsWe found associations of long-term PM 2.5 exposure with all-cause, nonaccidental, respiratory, and lung cancer mortality, but not with cardiovascular mortality. This study benefits from finely reconstructed time-varying exposures and extensive control for confounding, further supporting a plausible causal link between long-term PM 2.5 and mortality.
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