UCLA Summer Program in Statistics: Air Pollution and Health Lab Materials

Modules

Module 1 | Module 2 | Module 3 | Module 4

Background reading

[PDF] Fine Particulate Air Pollution and Hospital Admission for Cardiovascular and Respiratory Diseases, Journal of the American Medical Association, 295 (10) 1127--1134
[PDF] Time-Series Studies of Particulate Matter, Annual Review of Public Health, 25, 247--280.

R code

uclaworkshop.R	miscellaneous code for use in all modules.
cheatsheet.pdf	R cheat sheet
solutions.R	Solutions to modules

City data from the National Morbidity, Mortality, and Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS), for modules 1 and 2

The "Standard" datasets have all of the mortality, weather, and air pollution data for each city. The "Age category specific mortality" datasets have mortality time series data for each city split into 3 age categories: under 65, 65--74, and 75 and above.

City	Standard	Age category specific mortality
Chicago, IL	chic.rda	chic.mortality.rda
New York, NY	ny.rda	ny.mortality.rda
Los Angeles, CA	la.rda	la.mortality.rda
Seattle, WA	seat.rda	seat.mortality.rda
Pittsburgh, PA	pitt.rda	pitt.mortality.rda

There are data available for other cities also. Each city dataset has many variables but the primary variables we will be looking at are:

Variable	Description
death	daily mortality counts from all causes excluding accidents
pm10	daily PM₁₀ time series, measured in μg/m³
l1pm10	daily PM₁₀ values lagged by 1 day
o3	daily ozone time series, measured in parts per billion (ppb)
date	the date in YYYY-MM-DD format
tmpd	daily average temperature (in ^oF)

Estimates from the Medicare Air Pollution Study (MCAPS), for modules 3 and 4

MCAPS.rda --- estimates from MCAPS study.
MCAPSsubset.rda --- estimates from MCAPS study using values or PM_2.5 less than 35 μg/m³.
countyinfo.rda --- characteristics of counties in MCAPS data
The MCAPS study website