Effects of Air Pollution on Human Health

Running head: Healthcare 1
Environmental Epidemiology
by
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Research question
Are the measures of air pollution control in the cities more effective in the improvement of its
effect on human health?
Population/patient: urban dwellers
Intervention: measures of control of air pollution
Comparison: no measures
Outcome: improved human health
Literature review
Search Strategy
The first stage of carrying out a comprehensive search strategy was by first formulating the
research question which was “Are the measures of air pollution control in the cities more
effective in the improvement of its effect on human health?” The research question was then
broken down into the precise subject areas in order to generate phrases, synonyms, and
keywords. The subject areas include air pollution, human health, urban air pollution, and
measures of air pollution control. The keywords were obtained from the research question
and the synonyms developed from the keywords. The identification of the synonyms was
done with the help of dictionaries and other learning materials. The specific keywords include
urban air pollution, human health, measures of air pollution control, air pollution.
The researcher made use of different phrases and words to explore the specific subject areas,
thus prompting the use of synonyms in addition to keywords during the search in order to
capture all significant research. The specific synonyms used include:
Air pollution – air pollution$, air pollutant$

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Human health – human healt$, human health effect$
Measures of air pollution control – air pollution contro$, measures of contro$
It is important to note that articles like an, a, in, of, or among others were not used together
with the keywords during the search.
After the researcher had identified all the keywords, synonyms and phrases, they were
combined using the Boolean operators ‘AND’, ‘OR’, and ‘NOT’ (Hammer & Rudeanu,
2012). The ‘OR’ operator was used to combine all the synonyms into one search. For
example,
Air pollution – air pollution$ OR air pollutant$
Human health – human healt$ OR human health effects
Measures of air pollution control – air pollution contro$ OR measures of contro$
The ‘AND’ operator was used to combine all items from all the searches.
{Air pollution$ OR air pollutant$} AND {human healt$ OR human health effects} AND {air
pollution contro$ OR measures of contro$}.
The NOT operator was used to exclude items during the search.
{Air pollution$ OR air pollutant$} AND {human healt$ OR human health effects} AND {air
pollution contro$ OR measures of contro$} NOT {Rural}. All the searches that were in
reference to the rural environment were excluded. The articles included in the search were
not more than ten years old (2010-2019).
Four electronic databases were used to identify the most appropriate articles for the review.
These include PubMed, Cochrane Library and BMJ. Medical subject headings (MeSH) were
used alongside the keywords during the search. The search was restricted to articles published

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in the English language. Google Scholar is an example of the internet search engines used to
locate the relevant articles.
A PRISMA flow was used as a guideline in the search strategy as indicated below
Source: (Fleming, Seehra, Polychronopoulou, Fedorowicz, & Pandis, 2012).
IdentificationScreeningEligibilityIncluded
Studies identified through
database search
(n= 10)
Other records identified from
other sources
(n=4 )
No of studiesafter eliminating
duplicates
(n= 6)
Screened articles
(n=6 )
Excluded articles-not
full text
(n=2 )
Full text articles assessed for
eligibility
(n= 4)
Excluded articles-not
addressing air
pollution in urban
(n= 1)
Articles included in the
review
(n=3 )