Background: Exposure to particulate matter air pollution (PM) has been associated with cardiovascular diseases.
Objectives: In this study we evaluated whether annual exposure to ambient air pollution is associated with systemic inflammation, which is hypothesized to be an intermediate step to cardiovascular disease.
Methods: Six cohorts of adults from Central and Northern Europe were used in this cross-sectional study as part of the larger ESCAPE project (European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects). Data on levels of blood markers for systemic inflammation—high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (CRP) and fibrinogen—were available for 22,561 and 17,428 persons, respectively. Land use regression models were used to estimate cohort participants’ long-term exposure to various size fractions of PM, soot, and nitrogen oxides (NOx). In addition, traffic intensity on the closest street and traffic load within 100 m from home were used as indicators of traffic air pollution exposure.
Results: Particulate air pollution was not associated with systemic inflammation. However, cohort participants living on a busy (> 10,000 vehicles/day) road had elevated CRP values (10.2%; 95% CI: 2.4, 18.8%, compared with persons living on a quiet residential street with < 1,000 vehicles/day). Annual NOx concentration was also positively associated with levels of CRP (3.2%; 95% CI: 0.3, 6.1 per 20 μg/m3), but the effect estimate was more sensitive to model adjustments. For fibrinogen, no consistent associations were observed.
Conclusions: Living close to busy traffic was associated with increased CRP concentrations, a known risk factor for cardiovascular diseases. However, it remains unclear which specific air pollutants are responsible for the association.
1Department of Health Protection, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Kuopio, Finland; 2Institute of Epidemiology II, German Research Center for Environmental Health, Helmholtz Zentrum München, Neuherberg, Germany; 3Biometry and Epidemiology, Institute for Medical Informatics, University Hospital Essen, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany; 4Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, the Netherlands; 5Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care, Department of Epidemiology, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, the Netherlands; 6Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel, Switzerland; 7University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland; 8Institute of Environmental Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; 9IUF-Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine, Düsseldorf, Germany; 10Medical Faculty, Deanery of Medicine, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany; 11Department of Chronic Disease Prevention, National Institute for Health and Welfare, Helsinki, Finland; 12Department of Internal Medicine II-Cardiology, University of Ulm Medical Center, Ulm, Germany; 13Deutsches Herzzentrum München, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany; 14West-German Heart Center, Department of Cardiology, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany; 15Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden; 16Centre for Environmental Health, National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, Bilthoven, the Netherlands; 17Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, USA; 18Institute of Epidemiology and Medical Biometry, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany
Recommended Citation:
Timo Lanki,1 Regina Hampel,2 Pekka Tiittanen,et al. Air Pollution from Road Traffic and Systemic Inflammation in Adults: A Cross-Sectional Analysis in the European ESCAPE Project[J]. Environmental Health Perspectives,2015-01-01,Volume 123(Issue 8):785