Environmental Epidemiology

Running head: ENVIRONMENTAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Environmental Epidemiology
Name of the student
University name
Author’s note

1
ENVIRONMENTAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
Table of Contents
1. Research question using PICO format...............................................................................2
2. Systematic review of literature based on research question...............................................2
A. Search strategy......................................................................................................................2
B. summary of the results...........................................................................................................3
C. plausible biological mechanism in the research question......................................................6
D. gaps in the evidence and pathway for future research..........................................................6
References..............................................................................................................................8

2
ENVIRONMENTAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
1. Research question using PICO format
The current study focuses upon the health effects of air pollution as pollution is a
global problem and has been causing havoc to the health of people worldwide. For the current
assignment, we have been mainly taken the aspect of air pollution has been taken into
consideration.The air pollution has been seen to result in a number of respiratory disorders
within people. Most of the times, the affect of pollutants are deleterious resulting in serious
sickness such as lung cancer. Additionally, the air pollution has been damaging public and
private properties alike. The high amount of sulphur dioxide which are released in the form of
green house gases get dissolved in the atmospheric water droplets and are precipitated in the
form of acid rain (11). For example, the white marble of the Taj Mahal have been corroded
owing to the acid rain.
The further effects of air pollutions can be evaluated with the help of drafting an
effective research question. The research question has been represented in the PICO format.
Here, PICO refers to – Problem, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome.
In children and old age group (P) how can air pollution control strategies (I) against
exposure to large amount of air pollution compared to small amount of air pollution(C)
positively impact the health in the population group (O)?
2. Systematic review of literature based on research question
A. Search strategy
The researcher had used secondary research design for the collection of data where he
had mainly focused upon case study analysis. Some of this case study analysis has adopted
randomised control trial whereas the rest were case study analysis. For the randomised
control trials, the patients who had been suffering from some of the other respiratory issues

3
ENVIRONMENTAL EPIDEMIOLOGY
owing to exposure to high amount of air pollution had been taken into consideration. The
study methods have been further divided into control and experimental setups. The effect of
the control and intervention methods on the focus groups gad been further evaluated through
the research papers. The goal of the randomised control trials has been to reduce or control
the ill effects of air pollution on individual well being.
A number of inclusion and exclusion principle have been applied while doing the
research such as only secondary databases have been utilised for the collection of the journal
articles. Some of the secondary databases which had been used by the researcher over here
are CINAHL, PUBMED, NCBI etc.
During making the search only articles printed in English had been taken into
consideration. Additionally, the articles which had been published prior to the last 10 years
have not been taken into consideration. Additionally, a number of keywords were used of
making the search such as ‘air pollution’, ‘health effects’. The articles which had been
generate apart from the above search criteria had not been taken into consideration.
There were a number of strengths and limitation of the search criteria. Since
secondary databases were used only authentic peer reviewed article were taken into
consideration. Additionally, considering only the recent articles and journals the past biases
could be removed. However, there were a number of limitations of the search criteria as the
researcher narrowed down his search criteria to the past 10 years. Thus, some of the articles
published before that date was not taken into consideration, which could make the base of the
research much more strong.
B. summary of the results
Auth
or
year Researc
h setting
Study
design
Study
populati
Exposur
e
Outcome Bias Results