Response to “Quantifying the health impacts of ambient air pollutants: methodological errors must be avoided”

• Published in: International Journal of Public Health
• Main Authors: Héroux, Marie-Eve, Brunekreef, Bert, Ross Anderson, H., Cohen, Aaron, Francesco Forastiere, Hurley, Fintan, Katsouyanni, Klea, Krewsky, Daniel, Krzyzanowski, Michal, Mills, Inga, Künzli, Nino, Querol, Xavier, Ostro, Bart, Walton, Heather
• Other Authors: Querol, Xavier 0000-0002-6549-9899
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Springer Nature 2016
• Subjects: Air pollution; Health impact; Greenland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10261/219752; https://doi.org/10.1007/s00038-016-0808-x

We thank Morfeld and Erren for their interest in our recent publication on “Quantifying the health impacts of ambient air pollutants: recommendations of a WHO/Europe project” (Héroux et al. 2015). Morfeld and Erren claim that there are potential problems with the statistical approach used in our paper to measure the impact on mortality from air pollution. In fact, they state that “Greenland showed that a calculation based on RR estimates, as performed in the EU research project, does estimate excess cases numbers—but it does not estimate the number of premature cases or etiological cases” (Greenland 1999). Peer reviewed