This is a line of research that has been understudy in the United States since the mid-80s. The landmark Harvard Six Cities Study, (“An Association between Air Pollution and Mortality in Six U.S. Cities”) was perhaps the first to show the relationship between particulate pollution and increased mortality while controlling for smoking and other risks.
One of the study’s authors, C. Arden Pope (Prof. of Econ at BYU in Utah), is a leading researcher in this area and has continued to study the impact of air pollution on health. One of his more recent articles in the NEJM (“Fine-Particulate Air Pollution and Life Expectancy in the United States”) collects the major studies to-date and summarizes our current understanding. One of their findings was that “reductions in air pollution accounted for as much as 15% of the overall increase in life expectancy in the study areas.”
