Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: A Causal Inference Framework to Support Policy Decisions by Evaluating the Effectiveness of Past Air Pollution Control Strategies for the Entire United States
EPA Grant Number: R835872C004Subproject: this is subproject number 004 , established and managed by the Center Director under grant R835872
(EPA does not fund or establish subprojects; EPA awards and manages the overall grant for this center).
Center: Regional Air Pollution Mixtures
Center Director: Koutrakis, Petros
Title: A Causal Inference Framework to Support Policy Decisions by Evaluating the Effectiveness of Past Air Pollution Control Strategies for the Entire United States
Investigators: Zigler, Corwin , Dominici, Francesca , Schwartz, Joel , Mickley, Loretta J. , Barrett, Steven
Institution: Harvard University , Massachusetts Institute of Technology , The University of Texas at Austin
EPA Project Officer: Keating, Terry
Project Period: December 1, 2015 through November 30, 2020
RFA: Air, Climate And Energy (ACE) Centers: Science Supporting Solutions (2014) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Air Quality and Air Toxics , Airborne Particulate Matter Health Effects , Air , Climate Change
Objective:
The overall objective of Project 4 is to develop a new methodological framework rooted in principles of causal inference to investigate the effectiveness of specific control strategies on impacting the largest power-generating units in the United States. In Project 4, we combine state-of-the-art atmospheric modeling, causal inference methods, and national data sets to conduct accountability research; that is, research that characterizes causal effects of well-defined regulatory actions at power plants on: 1) emissions; 2) air quality across distant locations in accordance with atmospheric fate, transport, and other factors; and 3) health outcomes. Project 4 has 4 specific objectives.
Objective 1 is to develop a national database on emissions control technologies employed at a large number of power-generating units in the US linked with: continuous emissions monitoring, ambient air quality monitoring, weather, population demographics, and Medicare hospitalization and mortality outcomes for the period 1995 to 2015. Objective 2 is to estimate and compare the causal effects of past control strategies implemented at the largest power-generating facilities on SO2, NOx, CO2, and PM2.5 emissions and population exposure to criteria pollutants (PM2.5 and O3) for the entire US for the period 2000 to 2015. This requires integrating new statistical methods for causal inference with atmospheric chemistry models of how changes in emissions impact ambient exposures across distant locations in accordance with atmospheric fate, transport, and other factors. Objective 3 is to estimate the causal effects of past control strategies implemented at the largest power-generating facilities on mortality and morbidity in the entire US both locally and nationally, and compare the differential health impact of different control strategies. And Objective 4 is to develop approaches for mediation analysis that will quantify the extent to which causal effects of regulatory actions on health outcomes can be attributable to changes in targeted modifiable factors (e.g., emissions, targeted pollutants), as opposed to being driven by co-benefits to other factors.
Conclusions:
The accomplishments of this project fall into two main categories. First, the methods developed and analyses conducted have further established the causal link between exposure to ambient air pollution and human health, focusing particular on the health of US Medicare beneficiaries. These accomplishments have taken the form of new statistical methodologies and large-scale epidemiologic studies linking a variety of air pollutants and source-specific emissions to all cause mortality and other health endpoints. The second category of accomplishments fall in the area of reduced complexity air quality modeling designed specifically to estimate how pollution from power plants contributes to populations pollution exposures and downstream health outcomes. These methods, when combined with the statistical and epidemiological tools developed as part of this project, have advanced the technology for health impact assessment of regulatory interventions enacted at point sources of air pollution, most notably coal-fired power plants. Efforts to quantify exposure disparities and environmental justice endpoints associated with coal power plants have accompanied epidemiologic analyses of health endpoints.
Journal Articles on this Report : 44 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
| Other subproject views: | All 52 publications | 45 publications in selected types | All 45 journal articles |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other center views: | All 453 publications | 420 publications in selected types | All 419 journal articles |
| Type | Citation | ||
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
Casey J, Su J, Henneman L, Zigler C, Neophytou A, Catalano R, Gondalia R, Chen Y, Kaye L, Moyer S, Combs V, Simrall G, Smith T, Sublett J, Barrett M. Improved asthma outcomes observed in the vicinity of coal power plant retirement, retrofit and conversion to natural gas. NATURE ENERGY 2020;5(5):398. |
R835872 (2020) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Di Q, Wang Y, Zanobetti A, Wang Y, Koutrakis P, Choirat C, Dominici F, Schwartz JD. Air pollution and mortality in the Medicare population. New England Journal of Medicine 2017;376(26):2513-2522. |
R835872 (2016) R835872 (2017) R835872C003 (Final) R835872C004 (Final) R834798 (Final) R834798C002 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Kim C, Tec M, Zigler C. Bayesian nonparametric adjustment of confounding. BIOMETRICS 2023;Early Access |
R835872 (2021) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Lee M, Schwartz J, Wang Y, Dominici F, Zanobetti A. Long-term effect of fine particulate matter on hospitalization with dementia. Environmental Pollution 2019;254:112. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C003 (Final) R835872C004 (Final) R834798 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Makar M, Antonelli J, Di Q, Cutler D, Schwartz J, Dominici F. Estimating the causal effect of low levels of fine particulate matter on hospitalization. Epidemiology 2017;28(5):627-634. |
R835872 (2016) R835872 (2017) R835872C003 (Final) R835872C004 (Final) R835872C005 (2016) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Papadogeorgou G, Dominici F. A causal exposure response function with local adjustment for confounding: Estimating health effects of exposure to low levels of ambient fine particulate matter. Annals of Applied Statistics 2020; 14(2):850-871. |
R835872 (2020) R835872C004 (Final) |
|
|
|
Qiu M, ZIgler C, Selin N. Statistical and machine learning methods for evaluating trends in air quality under changing meteorological conditions. ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS 2022;22(16):10551-10566. |
R835872 (2021) R835872C004 (Final) R835872C005 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Wikle N, Hanks E, Henneman L, Zigler C. A Mechanistic Model of Annual Sulfate Concentrations in the United States. JOURNALS OF THE AMERICAN STATISTICAL ASSOCIATION 2022;. |
R835872 (2020) R835872C004 (Final) R834798 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Wu X, Nethery RC, Sabath MB, Braun D, Dominici F. Air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States:Strengths and limitations of an ecological regression analysis. Science Advances 2020; 6(45) |
R835872 (2020) R835872C004 (Final) R834677 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Wu X, Braun D, Schwartz J, Kioumourtzoglou M, Dominici F. Evaluating the impact of long-term exposure to fine particulate matter on mortality among the elderly. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2020;6(29):eaba5692. |
R835872 (2020) R835872C003 (Final) R835872C004 (Final) R834798 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Zigler CM, Choirat C, Dominici F. Impact of National Ambient Air Quality Standards nonattainment designations on particulate pollution and health. Epidemiology 2018;29(2):165-174. |
R835872 (2016) R835872C004 (Final) R836156 (2018) R836156 (2020) |
Exit |
|
|
Zigler C. Invited Commentary: The Promise and Pitfalls of Causal Inference With Multivariate Environmental Exposures. AMERICAN JOURNAL OF EPIDEMIOLOGY 2021;190(12):2658-2661 |
R835872 (2020) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Zigler C, Liu V, Mealli F, Forastiere L. Bipartite interference and air pollution transport: estimating health effects of power plant interventions. BIOSTATISTICS 2025;26(1) |
R835872 (Final) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Dominici F, Zigler C. Best practices for gauging evidence of causality in air pollution epidemiology. American Journal of Epidemiology 2017;186(12):1303-1309. |
R835872 (2017) R835872C004 (Final) R834798 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Lin C, Christiani D, Lin RT. 0059 A global perspective on coal-fired power plants and lung cancer mortality. Occupational and Environmental Medicine 2017;74:A16. |
R835872 (2018) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Cutler D, Dominici F. A breath of bad air:cost of the Trump environmental agenda may lead to 80 000 extra deaths per decade. JAMA 2018;319(22):2261-2262. |
R835872 (2018) R835872C004 (Final) |
not available |
|
|
Lin CK, Lin RT, Chen PC, Wang P, De Marcellis-Warin N, Zigler C, Christiani DC. A global perspective on sulfur oxide controls in coal-fired power plants and cardiovascular disease. Scientific Reports 2018;8(1):2611. |
R835872 (2018) R835872C004 (Final) |
|
|
|
Papadogeorgou G, Choirat C, Zigler CM. Adjusting for unmeasured spatial confounding with distance adjusted propensity score matching. Biostatistics 2018;20(2):256-272. |
R835872 (2017) R835872 (2018) R835872C004 (Final) |
|
|
|
Schwartz JD, Wang Y, Kloog I, Yitshak-Sade MA, Dominici F, Zanobetti A. Estimating the effects of PM on life expectancy using causal modeling methods. Environmental Health Perspectives 2018;126(12):127002.. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) |
|
|
|
Wilson A, Zigler CM, Patel CJ, Dominici F. Model‐averaged confounder adjustment for estimating multivariate exposure effects with linear regression. Biometrics 2018;74(3):1034-1044. |
R835872 (2017) R835872C004 (Final) R836156 (2019) R836156 (2020) |
|
|
|
Wei Y, Wang Y, Di Q, Choirat C, Wang Y, Koutrakis P, Zanobetti A, Dominici F and Schwartz JD. Short term exposure to fine particulate matter and hospital admission risks and costs in the Medicare population:time stratified, case crossover study. BMJ 2019; 367:l6258. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C003 (Final) R835872C004 (Final) R834798 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Henneman LR, Mickley LJ, Zigler CM. Air pollution accountability of energy transitions:the relative importance of point source emissions and wind fields in exposure changes. Environmental Research Letters 2019;14(11):115003. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Wu X, Braun D, Kioumourtzoglou MA, Choirat C, Di Q, Dominici F. Causal inference in the context of an error prone exposure:air pollution and mortality. The Annals of Applied Statistics 2019;13(1):520-547. |
R835872 (2018) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Papadogeorgou G, Mealli F, Zigler CM. Causal inference with interfering units for cluster and population level treatment allocation programs. Biometrics 2019; 75(3):778-787. |
R835872 (2018) R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) |
|
|
|
Henneman LR, Choirat C, Ivey C, Cummiskey K, Zigler CM. Characterizing population exposure to coal emissions sources in the United States using the HyADS model. Atmospheric Environment 2019;203:271-280. |
R835872 (2018) R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Yitshak-Sade M, Blomberg AJ, Zanobetti A, Schwartz JD, Coull BA, Kloog I, Dominici F and Koutrakis P. County-level radon exposure and all-cause mortality risk among Medicare beneficiaries. Environ Int 2019; 130:104865. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C001 (Final) R835872C003 (Final) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Goldman GT and Dominici F. Don't abandon evidence and process on air pollution policy. Science 2019; 363(6434):1398-1400. |
R835872C004 (Final) |
not available |
|
|
Gilstrap LG, Dominici F, Wang Y, El-Sady MS, Singh A, Di Carli MF, Falk RH, Dorbala S. Epidemiology of cardiac amyloidosis-associated heart failure hospitalizations among fee-for-service medicare beneficiaries in the United States. Circulation Heart Failure 2019;12(6):e005407. |
R835872 (2018) R835872C004 (Final) |
|
|
|
Nethery RC, Mealli F, Dominici F. Estimating population average causal effects in the presence of non-overlap:the effect of natural gas compressor station exposure on cancer mortality. The Annals of Applied Statistics 2019;13(2):1242-1267. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) R836156 (2019) R836156 (2020) |
Exit |
|
|
Antonelli J, Parmigiani G, Dominici F. High-dimensional confounding adjustment using continuous spike and slab priors. Bayesian Analysis 2019;14(3):805-828. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) R836156 (2020) |
|
|
|
Rhee J, Dominici F, Zanobetti A, Schwartz J, Wang Y, Di Q, Balmes J, Christiani DC. Impact of long-term exposures to ambient PM2.5 and ozone on ARDS risk for older adults in the United States. Chest 2019; 156(1):71-79. |
R835872 (2018) R835872 (2019) R835872C003 (Final) R835872C004 (Final) |
|
|
|
Jhun I, Kim J, Cho B, Gold DR, Schwartz J, Coull BA, Zanobetti A, Rice MB, Mittleman MA, Garshick E, Vokonas P. Synthesis of Harvard Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Center studies on traffic-related particulate pollution and cardiovascular outcomes in the Greater Boston Area. Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association 2019;69(8):900-917. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C002 (Final) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Heo S, Nori-Sarma A, Lee K, Benmarhnia T, Dominici F and Bell ML. The Use of a Quasi-Experimental Study on the Mortality Effect of a Heat Wave Warning System in Korea. Int J Environ Res Public Health 2019; 16(12). |
R835872C004 (Final) |
not available |
|
|
Anderson GB, Barnes EA, Bell ML, Dominici F. The future of climate epidemiology:opportunities for advancing health research in the context of climate change. American Journal of Epidemiology 2019;188(5):866-872. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) R835871 (2019) R835871 (2020) |
Exit |
|
|
Carone M, Dominici F and Sheppard L. In Pursuit of Evidence in Air Pollution Epidemiology:The Role of Causally Driven Data Science. Epidemiology 2020; 31(1):1-6. |
R835872C004 (Final) |
not available |
|
|
Liao SX, Henneman L and Zigler C. Posterior predictive treatment assignment methods for causal inference in the context of time-varying treatments. Epidemiologic Methods 2020; 9(1):20190024. |
R835872C004 (Final) |
not available |
|
|
Nethery RC, Mealli F, Sacks JD, Dominici F. Evaluation of the Health Impacts of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments Using Causal Inference and Machine Learning. Journal of the American Statistical Association 2020:1-12 |
R835872 (2020) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Lee K, Small DS and Dominici F. Discovering Heterogeneous Exposure Effects Using Randomization Inference in Air Pollution Studies. J Am Stat Assoc 2021; 116(534):569-580. |
R835872C004 (Final) |
not available |
|
|
Henneman LRF, Shen H, Hogrefe C, Russell AG, Zigler CM. Four decades of United States mobile source pollutants:Spatial–temporal trends assessed by ground-based monitors, air quality models, and satellites. Environmental Science & Technology 2021;55:882–92 |
R835872C004 (Final) R835880 (Final) |
Exit Exit |
|
|
Henneman LR, Choirat C, Zigler CM. Accountability assessment of health improvements in the United States associated with reduced coal emissions between 2005 and 2012. Epidemiology,/em> 2019;30(4):477-485.. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Henneman LR, Dedoussi IC, Casey JA, Choirat C, Barrett SR, Zigler CM. Comparisons of simple and complex methods for quantifying exposure to individual point source air pollution emissions. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology 2020:1-10. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Kim C, Henneman LR, Choirat C, Zigler CM. Health effects of power plant emissions through ambient air quality. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society:Series A. 2020. [Epub ahead of print]. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
|
|
Henneman LRF, Rasel MM, Choirat C, Anenberg SC and Zigler C. Inequitable Exposures to U.S. Coal Power Plant-Related PM2.5:22 Years and Counting. Environ Health Perspect 2023; 131(3):37005. |
R835872C004 (Final) |
not available |
|
|
Liao SX, Zigler CM. Uncertainty in the design stage of two‐stage Bayesian propensity score analysis. Statistics in Medicine 2020. [Epub ahead of print]. doi:10.1002/sim.8486. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C004 (Final) |
Exit |
Supplemental Keywords:
Interference, reduced form modeling, coal power plants, air quality management, causal analysis methods
Relevant Websites:
National Studies on Air Pollution and Health - Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health Exit
National Studies on Air Pollution and Health Software Exit
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractMain Center Abstract and Reports:
R835872 Regional Air Pollution Mixtures Subprojects under this Center: (EPA does not fund or establish subprojects; EPA awards and manages the overall grant for this center).
R835872C001 Project 1: Regional Air Pollution Mixtures: The Past and Future Impacts of Emission Controls and Climate Change on Air Quality and Health
R835872C002 Project 2: Air Pollutant Mixtures in Eastern Massachusetts: Spatial Multi-resolution Analysis of Trends, Effects of Modifiable Factors, Climate and Particle-induced Mortality
R835872C003 Project 3: Causal Estimates of Effects of Regional and National Pollution Mixtures on Health: Providing Tools for Policy Makers
R835872C004 A Causal Inference Framework to Support Policy Decisions by Evaluating the Effectiveness of Past Air Pollution Control Strategies for the Entire United States
R835872C005 Project 5: Projecting and Quantifying Future Changes in Socioeconomic Drivers of Air Pollution and its Health-Related Impacts
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.
Project Research Results
45 journal articles for this subproject
Main Center: R835872
453 publications for this center
419 journal articles for this center