Long-term exposure to ambient PM2.5 and population health : evidence from longitudinally-linked census data

Extensive evidence shows exposure to ambient PM2.5 is associated with a wide range of poor health outcomes. But few studies examine genuinely long-run pollution exposures in nationally representative data. This study does so, exploiting longitudinally-linked Census data for Northern Ireland, linked to annual average PM2.5 concentrations at the 1km grid-square level from 2002-2010, exploiting complete residential histories. We show strong unconditional associations between PM2.5 exposure, self-rated general health, disability, and all available (eleven) domain-specific health measures in the data. Associations with poor general health, chronic illness, breathing difficulties, mobility difficulties, and deafness are robust to extensive conditioning and to further analysis designed to examine sensitivity to unobserved confounders.