Mortality and air pollution: associations persist with continued advances in research methodology.

Mortality and Air Pollution: Associations Persist with Continued Advances in Research Methodology (See Neas et al., p. 629; Lee and Schwartz; p. 633; andFairley, p. 637) In this issue of Environmental Health Perspectives there are papers by Fairley, Neas et al., and Lee and Schwartz.Although these papers present different approaches, they provide a reasonable representation of state- of-the-art epidemiologic research that evaluates daily changes in mortality and air pollution.The authors of these papers include investigators who have been primary con- tributors to the development of this research.The earliest and most methodologically simple studies that evaluated day-to-day changes in mortality associated with air pol- lution were studies that focused on severe air pollution episodes.These studies simply compared death counts for several days or weeks before, during, and after pollution episodes.Substantially elevated cardiopulmonary mortality associated with severe air pollution episodes in Meuse Valley, Belgium, in 1930 (1); Donora, Pennsylvania, in 1948 -5FAJ? 1 4q1,11