Impact of residential mobility on exposure assessment in longitudinal air pollution studies: a sensitivity analysis within the ESCAPE project

ScientificWorldJournal. 2012:2012:125818. doi: 10.1100/2012/125818. Epub 2012 Nov 28.

Abstract

Exposure misclassification in longitudinal studies of air pollution exposure and health effects can occur due to residential mobility in a study population over followup. The aim of this study was to investigate to what extent residential mobility during followup can be expected to cause exposure misclassification in such studies, where exposure at the baseline address is used as the main exposure assessment. The addresses for each participant in a large population-based study (N > 25,000) were obtained via national registers. We used a Land Use Regression model to estimate the NO(x) concentration for each participant's all addresses during the entire follow-up period (in average 14.6 years) and calculated an average concentration during followup. The Land Use Regression model explained 83% of the variation in measured levels. In summary, the NO(x) concentration at the inclusion address was similar to the average concentration over followup with a correlation coefficient of 0.80, indicating that air pollution concentration at study inclusion address could be used as indicator of average air pollution concentrations over followup. The differences between an individual's inclusion and average follow-up mean concentration were small and seemed to be nondifferential with respect to a large range of factors and disease statuses, implying that bias due to residential mobility was small.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Air Pollutants / analysis
  • Air Pollutants / toxicity
  • Data Interpretation, Statistical
  • Environmental Exposure / analysis*
  • Environmental Exposure / statistics & numerical data*
  • Environmental Monitoring / methods
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Longitudinal Studies
  • Male
  • Nitrogen Oxides / analysis
  • Nitrogen Oxides / toxicity
  • Population Dynamics*
  • Regression Analysis
  • Sweden
  • Time Factors

Substances

  • Air Pollutants
  • Nitrogen Oxides