46 / 67
44
Post-Doctoral Fellowships
Assessing Temporally-and Spatially-Resolved PM
2.5
Exposures for
Epidemiological Studies Using Satellite Aerosol Optical Depth
Accurate assessment of exposure to environmental pollutants is essential for establishing a
relation between exposure to a certain pollutant and its health effects. During the past few years we
have developed a novel method to quantitatively model the relationship between PM
2.5
measurements
and MODIS satellite AOD (aerosol optical depth) across the North Eastern USA during the years
2000-2012. With broad spatial coverage, satellite data now allow us to expand exposure data well
beyond ground monitoring networks into rural and suburban areas with spatial resolution down to
1 km, which greatly enhances our ability to estimate subject-specific exposures. Our models perform
extremely well with an out-of-sample tenfold cross-validated R2 of 0.88. Importantly, these R2 values
are for daily, rather than monthly or yearly values. We clearly demonstrated that using our prediction
models reduces exposure error, resulting in better exposure assignment and also demonstrated how
AOD can be reliably used to predict PM
2.5
.
Using similar methodology we developed models to estimate daily air temperature from satellite
surface temperature at a high spatial resolution of 1 km. Once again we demonstrated how
satellite data can be used reliably to estimate daily air temperature at high resolution in large
geographical areas.
These novel prediction models were later used in various health outcome studies. First, we used these
daily PM
2.5
predictions to assign exposure to mortality cases in Massachusetts during the years 2000-
2008. Then we used our prediction models for a study of the association between PM
2.5
exposure
during pregnancy and reduced birth weight in Massachusetts during the years 2000-2008. We then
studied the effects of short and long term PM
2.5
exposure on hospital admissions across New-England
during the years 2000-2006 and across the Mid-Atlantic states between 2000-2008. In all the above
studies we found a significant association between exposure to PM
2.5
and negative health effects.
Research publications
(1)
Kloog, I., Koutrakis, P., Coull, B.A., Lee, H.J., & Schwartz, J. (2011). Assessing temporally and spatially resolved
PM
2.5
exposures for epidemiological studies using satellite aerosol optical depth measurements.
Atmospheric
Environment, 45
(35), 6267-6275.
(2)
Kloog, I., Chudnovsky, A., Koutrakis, P., & Schwartz, J. (2012). Temporal and spatial assessments of minimum air temperature
using satellite surface temperature measurements in Massachusetts, USA.
Science of the Total Environment, 432
, 85-92.
(3)
Kloog, I., Coull, B.A., Zanobetti, A., Koutrakis, P., & Schwartz, J.D. (2012). Acute and chronic effects of particles on
hospital admissions in New-England.
PLoS ONE, 7
(4), e34664.
(4)
Kloog, I., Melly, S.J., Ridgway, W.L., Coull, B.A., & Schwartz, J. (2012). Using new satellite based exposure methods
to study the association between pregnancy PM
2.5
exposure, premature birth and birth weight in Massachusetts.
Environmental Health, 11
(1), 40.
(5)
Kloog, I., Nordio, F., Coull, B.A., & Schwartz, J. (2012). Incorporating local land use regression and satellite aerosol
optical depth in a hybrid model of spatiotemporal PM
2.5
exposures in the Mid-Atlantic states.
Environmental Science
& Technology, 46
(21), 11913-11921.
(6)
Chiu, YH.M., Coull, B.A., Sternthal, M.J., Kloog, I., Schwartz, J., Cohen, S., &Wright, R.J. (2013). Effects of prenatal
community violence and ambient air pollution on childhood wheeze in an urban population.
Journal of Allergy and
Clinical Immunology, 133
(3), 713-722.
(7)
Kloog, I., Ridgway, B., Koutrakis, P., Coull, B.A., & Schwartz, J.D. (2013). Long- and short-term exposure to PM
2.5
and mortality.
Epidemiology, 24
(4), 555-561.
(8)
Madrigano, J., Kloog, I., Goldberg, R., Coull, B.A., Mittleman, M.A., & Schwartz, J. (2013). Long-term exposure to
PM
2.5
and incidence of acute myocardial infarction.
Environmental Health Perspectives, 121
(2), 192.
(9)
Nordio, F., Kloog, I., Coull, B.A., Chudnovsky, A., Grillo, P., Bertazzi, P.A., Baccarelli, A.A., & Schwartz, J. (2013).
Estimating spatio-temporal resolved PM
10
aerosol mass concentrations using MODIS satellite data and land use
regression over Lombardy, Italy.
Atmospheric Environment, 74
, 227-236.
(10)
Chudnovsky, A.A., Koutrakis, P., Kloog, I., Melly, S., Nordio, F., Lyapustin, A.,Wang,Y., & Schwartz, J. (2014). Fine particulate
matter predictions using high resolution aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrievals.
Atmospheric Environment, 89
, 189-198.
(11)
Fleisch, A.F., Gold, D.R., Rifas-Shiman, S.L., Koutrakis, P., Schwartz, J.D., Kloog, I., Melly, S., Coull, B.A., Zanobetti,
A., & Gillman, M.W. (2014). Air pollution exposure and abnormal glucose tolerance during pregnancy: The project
viva cohort.
Environmental Health Perspectives, 122
(4), 378-383.
(12)
Kloog, I., Nordio, F., Zanobetti, A., Coull, B.A., Koutrakis, P., & Schwartz, J.D. (2014). Short term effects of particle
exposure on hospital admissions in the Mid-Atlantic states: A population estimate.
PloS ONE, 9
(2), e88578.
Fellow
Itai Kloog
Harvard University, USA
Supervisor
Joel Schwartz
2010-2012