Overview
Contact: dean.hosgood@einsteinmed.org
Household air pollution (HAP) is of public health concern, with ~3 billion people worldwide (including >15 million in the US) exposed. HAP from coal use is a human lung carcinogen, yet the epidemiological evidence on carcinogenicity of HAP from biomass use, primarily wood, is not conclusive. To robustly assess biomass’s carcinogenic potential, prospective studies of individuals experiencing a variety of HAP exposures are needed. Along with key collaborators from around the world, notably Qing Lan of the US National Cancer Institute, Dr. Hosgood has built a global consortium of prospective cohorts (HAPCO: Household Air Pollution Consortium) that have site- and disease-specific mortality and solid fuel use data, for a combined sample size of >750,000 participants. HAPCO provides a novel opportunity to assess the association of HAP, and outdoor air pollution, with lung cancer death while controlling for important confounders such as tobacco exposures. HAPCO is also uniquely positioned to determine the risks associated with cancers other than lung as well as nonmalignant respiratory and cardiometabolic outcomes, for which prospective epidemiologic research is limited. HAPCO will facilitate research to address public health concerns associated with HAP-attributed exposures by enabling investigators to evaluate sex-specific and smoking status-specific effects under various exposure scenarios.
Funding: HAPCO has been funded in part by the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Global Health Center and the National Cancer Institute (1U01CA242740-01; PI: Hosgood).
Selected Publications
- Hosgood HD 3rd, Klugman M, Matsuo K, White AJ, Sadakane A, Shu XO, Lopez-Ridaura R, Shin A, Tsuji I, Malekzadeh R, Noisel N, Bhatti P, Yang G, Saito E, Rahman S, Hu W, Bassig B, Downward G, Vermeulen R, Xue X, Rohan T, Abe SK, Broët P, Grant EJ, Dummer TJB, Rothman N, Inoue M, Lajous M, Yoo KY, Ito H, Sandler DP, Ashan H, Zheng W, Boffetta P, Lan Q. The establishment of the Household Air Pollution Consortium (HAPCO). Atmosphere (Basel). 2019 Jul;10(7). doi: 10.3390/atmos10070422. Epub 2019 Jul 23. PMID: 32064123 PMCID: PMC7021252. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32064123/)