Public health and air pollution in Asia (PAPA): coordinated studies of short-term exposure to air pollution and daily mortality in two Indian cities
This report contains studies in Chennai and Delhi led by Dr. Kalpana Balakrishnan and Dr. Uma Rajarathnam, respectively. These time-series studies of air pollution and mortality in India were funded under HEI's PAPA Program to provide information to inform regulatory and other decisions that would be relevant to local populations, with the added goal of supporting scientific capacity building in the region. The studies followed a first wave of four studies in China and Thailand and explore key aspects of the epidemiology of exposure to air pollution — issues of local as well as global relevance — including the effects of exposure at high concentrations and at high temperatures. The investigators based their approaches on the common protocol of the first-wave PAPA studies but developed city-specific approaches due to differences in the availability and completeness of data in the Indian cities.