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Reported association of air pollution and suicide rate could be confounded Afshari, R.

Description

A statistical association between ambient air pollution and suicide mortality has been recently reported in Environmental Health, which seems not to be scientifically supported by their data. In this article, very low (unrealistic) suicide rate is reported, which is subjected to selection bias. Their justification is also flawed as high exposure to ambient air pollution in rural areas is lower as compared to urban residents. Weekends, holidays, time of death … are also both air pollution and suicide rate related. Reported statistical association of air pollution and suicide in this study is heavily confound. Please see article under discussion: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0177-1 .

Item Metadata

Title
Reported association of air pollution and suicide rate could be confounded
Creator
Afshari, R.
Contributor
BC Centre for Disease Control
Publisher
BioMed Central
Date Issued
2017-02-28
Description
A statistical association between ambient air pollution and suicide mortality has been recently reported in Environmental Health, which seems not to be scientifically supported by their data. In this article, very low (unrealistic) suicide rate is reported, which is subjected to selection bias. Their justification is also flawed as high exposure to ambient air pollution in rural areas is lower as compared to urban residents. Weekends, holidays, time of death … are also both air pollution and suicide rate related. Reported statistical association of air pollution and suicide in this study is heavily confound. Please see article under discussion: https://ehjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12940-016-0177-1 .
Subject
Air pollution; Suicide; Underreporting; Selection bias
Genre
Other
Type
Text
Language
eng
Date Available
2018-05-16
Provider
Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
Rights
Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
DOI
10.14288/1.0366898
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/2429/65954
Affiliation
Medicine, Faculty of; Other UBC; Population and Public Health (SPPH), School of
Citation
Environmental Health. 2017 Feb 28;16(1):16
Publisher DOI
10.1186/s12940-017-0219-3
Peer Review Status
Reviewed
Scholarly Level
Faculty
Copyright Holder
The Author(s).
Rights URI
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Aggregated Source Repository
DSpace

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Rights

Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)