Abstract
Applied science is largely about how to use observations to learn, express, and verify predictive generalizations—causal laws stating that if certain antecedent conditions hold, then certain consequences will follow. Non-deterministic or incompletely known causal laws may only determine conditional probabilities or occurrence rates for consequences from known conditions (Spirtes 2010). For example, different exposure concentrations of air pollution might cause different mortality incidence rates or age-specific hazard rates for people with different values of causally relevant covariates. A defining characteristic of sound science is that causal laws and their predictions are formulated and expressed unambiguously, using clear operational definitions, so that they can be independently tested and verified by others and empirically confirmed, refuted, or refined as needed using new data as it becomes available. Comparing unambiguous predictions to observations (using statistics if the predictions are probabilistic) determines the extent to which they are empirically supported. The authority of valid scientific conclusions rests on their testability, potential falsifiability, and empirically demonstrated predictive validity when tested. Using new data to constantly question, test, verify, and if necessary correct and refine previous predictive generalizations, and wider theories and networks of assumptions into which they may fit, is a hallmark of sound science. Its practical benefit in risk analysis is better understanding of what truly protects people, and what does not—for example, the unexpected discovery that administering retinol and beta carotene to subjects at risk of lung cancer increased risk instead of decreasing it (Omenn et al. 1996; Goodman et al. 2004).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Bareinboim E, Pearl J (2013) Causal transportability with limited experiments. In: Proceedings of the 27th AAAI conference on artificial intelligence, pp 95–101
Bashir MF, Ma BJ, Bilal A, et al. Correlation between environmental pollution indicators and COVID-19 pandemic: a brief study in Californian context. Environ Res. 2020;187:109652. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2020.109652.
Burns J, Boogaard H, Polus S, Pfadenhauer LM, Rohwer AC, van Erp AM, Turley R, Rehfuess E. Interventions to reduce ambient particulate matter air pollution and their effect on health. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2019;5:CD010919. https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD010919.pub2.
Burns J, Boogaard H, Polus S, Pfadenhauer LM, Rohwer AC, van Erp AM, Turley R, Rehfuess E. Interventions to reduce ambient air pollution and their effects on health: an abridged Cochrane systematic review. Environ Int. 2020;135:105400. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2019.105400.
Campbell DT, Stanley JC. Experimental and quasi-experimental designs for research. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company; 1963.
Clancy L, Goodman P, Sinclair H, Dockery DW. Effect of air-pollution control on death rates in Dublin, Ireland: an intervention study. Lancet. 2002;360(9341):1210–4.
Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) (2019) CASAC review of the EPA’s policy assessment for the review of the National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particulate Matter (External Review Draft—September 2019). https://yosemite.epa.gov/sab%5Csabproduct.nsf/E2F6C71737201612852584D20069DFB1/$File/EPA-CASAC-20-001.pdf
Cox LA Jr. Do causal concentration-response functions exist? A critical review of associational and causal relations between fine particulate matter and mortality. Crit Rev Toxicol. 2017;47(7):603–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408444.2017.1311838.
Cox LA Jr. Modernizing the Bradford Hill criteria for assessing causal relationships in observational data. Crit Rev Toxicol. 2018;15:1–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408444.2018.1518404.
Cromar K, Ewart G. Concentration-response associations used to estimate public health benefits of less pollution are not valid causal predictive models. Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2016;13(12):2281. https://doi.org/10.1513/AnnalsATS.201610-754LE.
Dockery DW, Rich DQ, Goodman PG, Clancy L, Ohman-Strickland P, George P, Kotlov T, HEI Health Review Committee. Effect of air pollution control on mortality and hospital admissions in Ireland. Res Rep Health Eff Inst. 2013;176:3–109.
Dominici F, Greenstone M, Sunstein CR. Science and regulation. Particulate matter matters. Science. 2014;344(6181):257–9. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1247348.
Drugmond D (2020) EPA clean air panel chair dismisses his oil industry ties, slams Harvard study on air pollution and COVID risks. https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/05/18/epa-clean-air-committee-cox-harvard-air-pollution-covid
Friedman L (2020). https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/07/climate/air-pollution-coronavirus-covid.html
Goldman GT, Dominici F (2019) Don’t abandon evidence and process on air pollution policy. Science. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aaw9460
Goodman GE, Thornquist MD, Balmes J, Cullen MR, Meyskens FL Jr, Omenn GS, Valanis B, Williams JH Jr. The beta-carotene and retinol efficacy trial: incidence of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality during 6-year follow-up after stopping beta-carotene and retinol supplements. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2004;96(23):1743–50.
Henneman LR, Liu C, Mulholland JA, Russell AG. Evaluating the effectiveness of air quality regulations: a review of accountability studies and frameworks. J Air Waste Manag Assoc. 2017;67(2):144–72. https://doi.org/10.1080/10962247.2016.1242518.
Jiang Y, Wu XJ, Guan YJ. Effect of ambient air pollutants and meteorological variables on COVID-19 incidence. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2020;222:1–11. https://doi.org/10.1017/ice.2020.222.
Kahneman D. Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux; 2011.
Krimsky S. The weight of scientific evidence in policy and law. Am J Public Health. 2005;95(S1):129–36.
Linkov I, Massey O, Keisler J, Rusyn I, Hartung T. From “weight of evidence” to quantitative data integration using multicriteria decision analysis and Bayesian methods. ALTEX. 2015;32(1):3–8. https://doi.org/10.14573/altex.1412231.
North DW. Commentary on “Should health risks of air pollution be studied scientifically?” by Louis Anthony Cox, Jr. Global Epidemiol. 2020;2:100021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloepi.2020.100021.
Omenn GS, Goodman GE, Thornquist MD, Balmes J, Cullen MR, Glass A, Keogh JP, Meyskens FL Jr, Valanis B, Williams JH Jr, Barnhart S, Cherniack MG, Brodkin CA, Hammar S. Risk factors for lung cancer and for intervention effects in CARET, the Beta-Carotene and Retinol Efficacy Trial. J Natl Cancer Inst. 1996;88(21):1550–9.
Pearl J. Causal inference in statistics: an overview. Stat Surveys. 2009;3:96–146.
Peters J, Bühlmann P, Meinshausen N. Causal inference by using invariant prediction: identification and confidence intervals. J R Stat Soc Ser B. 2016;78(5):947–1012.
Schwartz S, Gatto NM, Campbell UB. Transportabilty and causal generalization. Epidemiology. 2011;22(5):745–6.
Spirtes P. Introduction to causal inference. J Mach Learn Res. 2010;11:1643–62.
Stenlund T, Lidén E, Andersson K, Garvill J, Nordin S. Annoyance and health symptoms and their influencing factors: a population-based air pollution intervention study. Public Health. 2009;123(4):339–45. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2008.12.021.
Textor J, van der Zander B, Gilthorpe MS, Liskiewicz M, Ellison GT. Robust causal inference using directed acyclic graphs: the R package ‘dagitty’. Int J Epidemiol. 2016;45(6):1887–94.
Tollefson J (2019) Air pollution science under siege at US environment agency Top EPA adviser attacks agency decision-making ahead of major review of air pollution standards. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00937-w
Triantafillou S, Tsamardinos I. Constraint-based causal discovery from multiple interventions over overlapping variable sets. J Mach Learn Res. 2015;16:2147–205.
Wu X, Nethery RC, Sabath BM, Braun D, Dominic F (2020) Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States: a nationwide cross-sectional study. medRxiv 2020.04.05.20054502
Zhang L, Zhang Z, Wang C, et al. Int J Disaster Risk Sci. 2017;8:445. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13753-017-0149-2.
Zigler CM, Dominici F. Point: clarifying policy evidence with potential-outcomes thinking--beyond exposure-response estimation in air pollution epidemiology. Am J Epidemiol. 2014;180(12):1133–40. https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwu263.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Appendix 1: Data
Appendix 1: Data
We collected data from many sources, including most of those cited by Wu et al. (2020), but with alternate authoritative sources for temperature, humidity, and cases/deaths data. We used more recent data for PM2.5, demographics, temperatures, and cases/deaths, and added further sources or fields. For example, we collected USDA county level economic characterizations along with various county attributes compiled by the UC Berkeley Yu Group (2020). Table 1.4 summarizes data sources and variables. Data building was accomplished using python scripts. The full data set can be downloaded from http://cox-associates.com/CausalAnalytics/; it is the file “covidpm25.xlsx” (Table 1.5).
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cox Jr., L.A. (2021). Scientific Method for Health Risk Analysis: The Example of Fine Particulate Matter Air Pollution and COVID-19 Mortality Risk. In: Quantitative Risk Analysis of Air Pollution Health Effects. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, vol 299. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57358-4_1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-57358-4_1
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-57357-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-57358-4
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementBusiness and Management (R0)