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The Exposure Dimension of Environmental Epidemiology: A Critical but Under-ExploredStudy Quality Issue in Environmental Health
Citation:
Buckley, T. AND J. LaKind. The Exposure Dimension of Environmental Epidemiology: A Critical but Under-ExploredStudy Quality Issue in Environmental Health. ISES, 2014 Annual Meeting, Cincinnati, OH, October 12 - 16, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
The National Exposure Research Laboratory (NERL) Human Exposure and Atmospheric Sciences Division (HEASD) conducts research in support of EPA mission to protect human health and the environment. HEASD research program supports Goal 1 (Clean Air) and Goal 4 (Healthy People) of EPA strategic plan. More specifically, our division conducts research to characterize the movement of pollutants from the source to contact with humans. Our multidisciplinary research program produces Methods, Measurements, and Models to identify relationships between and characterize processes that link source emissions, environmental concentrations, human exposures, and target-tissue dose. The impact of these tools is improved regulatory programs and policies for EPA.
Description:
Epidemiological research plays a critical role in assessing the effects of various chemical, physical, oiological, and social exposures on human health both in the general population and the workplace. However, even epidemiological studies that are specifically designed to test causal hypotheses in humans often report conflicting results. For example, this has been the case for the rapidly growing number of studies utilizing observational cross-sectional databases such as NHANES. In the presence of substantial disagreement across study findings, regulatory bodies and consensus panels charged with setting policy to protect public health typically rely onweight-of-evidence (WOE) assessments. Study quality is an important consideration in a WOEassessment, and as part of that assessment, the exposure data quality must be evaluated. While determination of study quality will always to some extent involve professional judgment, there appears to be an emerging consensus that any evaluation of study quality should rely on agreed upon criteria that are applied systematically. Currently, there is a paucity of instruments for evaluating quality of environmental epidemiology studies and more specifically for the exposure data generated in these studies; scant attention has been paid to the quality of exposure assessments in studies used in WOE assessments. This underscores a need for methodological quality assessment tools that are designed specifically for human population studies evaluating health outcomes associated with environmental exposures. In this symposium, we will describe various aspects of quality of exposure assessment in environmental epidemiology research - including those occurring in occupational settings - and the need for exposure quality assessments in peer review of manuscripts and grant proposals, as well as in studies used as the underpinnings for WOE assessments. We will also discuss opportunities.for improving our ability to evaluate exposure data in environmental epidemiology research.