Effect of air pollution on lung cancer: a Poisson regression model based on vital statistics

This article describes a Poisson regression model for time trends of mortality to detect the long-term effects of common levels of air pollution on lung cancer, in which the adjustment for cigarette smoking is not always necessary. The main hypothesis to be tested in the model is that if the long-term and common-level air pollution had an effect on lung cancer, the death rate from lung cancer could be expected to increase gradually at a higher rate in the region with relatively high levels of air pollution than in the region with low levels, and that this trend would not be expected for other control diseases in which cigarette smoking is a risk factor. Using this approach, we analyzed the trend of mortality in females aged 40 to 79, from lung cancer and two control diseases, ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease, based on vital statistics in 23 wards of the Tokyo metropolitan area for 1972 to 1988. Ward-specific mean levels per day of SO2 and NO2 from 1974 through 1976 estimated by Makino (1978) were used as the ward-specific exposure measure of air pollution. No data on tobacco consumption in each ward is available. Our analysis supported the existence of long-term effects of air pollution on lung cancer.