Professor Linwei Tian is an environmental epidemiologist with a focus on air pollution and health. He has been conducting field epidemiology and laboratory work on indoor air pollution and lung cancer in Xuan Wei County, which has the highest lung cancer rates among women in China. Identifying the carcinogenic agents in coal and its emissions would affect local intervention policies and gain insights into the carcinogenesis mechanisms.

Urbanized Hong Kong provides another unique setting to study air pollution and health. Its high density of people and vehicles, high-rise buildings, a rich resource of accessible environmental measurement and healthcare data, and various air pollution control policies offers a great opportunity for valuable environmental epidemiology. Compared with static data, time series data contain far more information at our disposal for the inference of causality. Professor Tian has been trying to examine the earlier ambiguity and enhance causal inference of the environment-health associations by contrasting the traditional time series regression models with the recent methods of causal discovery from big data.

Significance of research output under RAE2020:

1. Reported in Neurology, PM2.5 was found to increase the risk of ischemic stroke but not clearly of haemorrhagic stroke in a large prospective cohort study.
2. The impact of intraseasonal temperature variability on respiratory diseases, reported in Thorax, draws attention to the adverse effects of changing intraseasonal temperature variability introduced by climate change.
3. The age-dependent effect of ozone on asthma, reported in Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, has implications for customized strategies to manage ozone pollution in order to protect public health.
4. The reduced influenza transmissibility associated with ambient ozone, reported in European Respiratory Journal, raises attention to ozone primed immunity against influenza virus infection.

1. Dai YR, Qiu H, Sun SZ, Yang Y, Lin HL, Tian LW*. Age-dependent Effect of Ambient Ozone on Emergency Asthma Hospitalizations in Hong Kong. J. Allergy Clin. Immunol. 2018; 141:1532-1534.e5. [link] [2017 IF=13.258] (Ranked 1 out of 27 under the category of “Allergy”) (Corresponding author)
2. Ali ST, Wu P, Cauchemez S, He DH, Fang VJ, Cowling BJ, Tian LW. Ambient ozone and influenza transmissibility in Hong Kong. European Respiratory Journal. 2018; 51:1800369. [link][2017 IF=12.244] (Ranked 3 out of 60 under the category of “Respiratory System”) (Last author)
3. Sun SZ, Laden F, Hart JE, Qiu H, Wang Y, Wong CM, Lee RSY, Tian LW*. Seasonal temperature variability and emergency hospital admissions for respiratory diseases: a population-based cohort study. Thorax. 2018; 73(10):951-958. [link][2017 IF=9.655] (Ranked 5 out of 60 under the category of “Respiratory System”) (Corresponding author)
4. Finkelman RB, Tian LW. The Health Impacts of Coal Use in China. International Geology Review. 2018; 60:579-589. [link] [2017 IF=2.875] (Ranked 7 out of 47 under the category of “Geology”) (Last author)
5. Tian LW, Qiu H, Sun S, Tsang H, Chan KP, Leung WK. Association between emergency admission for peptic ulcer bleeding and air pollution: a case-crossover analysis in Hong Kong’s elderly population. Lancet Planet Heal. 2017;1:e74-81. [link] (First author)
6. Qiu H, Sun SZ, Tsang H, Wong CM, Lee RSY, Schooling CM, Tian LW*. 2017. Fine Particulate Matter Exposure and Incidence of Stroke: A Cohort Study in Hong Kong. Neurology. 88(18):1709-1717. [link] [2017 IF=8.055] (Ranked 13 out of 197 under the category of “Clinical Neurology”) (Corresponding author)
7. Pun VC, Tian LW*, Yu ITS, Kioumourtzoglou MA, Qiu H. Differential distributed lag patterns of source-specific particulate matter on respiratory emergency hospitalizations. Environmental Science & Technology. 2015;49:3830-3838. [link][2017 IF=6.653] (Ranked 4 out of 50 under the category of “Engineering, Environmental”) (Corresponding author)
8. Qiu H, Tian LW*, Pun VC, Ho KF, Wong TW, Yu ITS. Coarse particulate matter associated with increased risk of emergency hospital admissions for pneumonia in Hong Kong. Thorax. 2014; 69(11):1027-1033. [link][2017 IF=9.655] (Ranked 5 out of 60 under the category of “Respiratory System”) (Corresponding author)
9. Pun VC, Yu ITS, Ho KF, Qiu H, Sun ZW, and Tian LW*. Differential Effects of Ambient Source-Specific Particulate Matter on Ischemic Heart Disease Emergency Hospitalizations. Environmental Health Perspectives. 2014;122(4):391-6. [link][2017 IF=8.44] (Ranked 4 out of 242 under the category of “Environmental Sciences”) (Corresponding author)
10. Tian LW*, Qiu H, Pun VC, Lin HL, Ge EJ, Chan JC, Louie PK, Ho KF, and Yu ITS. Ambient Carbon Monoxide Associated with Reduced Risk of Hospital Admissions for Respiratory Tract Infections. American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. 2013;188(10):1240-5. [link][2017 IF=15.239] (Ranked 2 out of 33 under the category of “Critical Care Medicine”) (First and corresponding author)