SHORT NOTE OF MEETING 13th OCTOBER 2006

Membership changes

1. Professor Vicki Stone, Professor Duncan Laxen and Professor Dick Derwent have accepted the invitation to serve on the Committee for a further 3 years.

Matters arising

2. Further follow-up was needed on consulting experts regarding the Knox paper discussed in February.

3. It was hoped that the seminar on roadside exposure would be held next Spring although this was still to be confirmed.

4. The Annual Air Pollution Research Meeting will be held at the Institute for Environment and Health at Cranfield on the 1st and 2nd of May 2007.

QUARK 2 Long-term exposure to air pollution and mortality

5. A near-final version of the report on long-term exposure to air pollution and mortality was discussed. Members were broadly content with the report and made some suggestions for improvements. Certain sections of the report were discussed in more detail such as the sections on the lag between exposure and effect and the sections on representing uncertainty. The Secretariat will work with the chairmen of QUARK and COMEAP to reflect the views of the Committee in the final report.

6. The Committee's comments will be incorporated and, with the assistance of the lay member, the report will be edited for clarity. The report will then be cleared by the Chairman before being placed on the COMEAP website for technical comment. It was hoped to do this during December.

QUARK 2 - Long-term exposure to air pollution and morbidity

7. The scope of this work had been discussed with the COMEAP Chairman, the Chairman of QUARK and the Chairman of the Morbidity Working Group. The Secretariat will be writing to Members of the Morbidity Working Group with an outline of the plan for the work.

QUARK 2 - Total Impact of the Effects of Long-term Exposure to Air Pollution on Mortality

8. The recommendations in the QUARK 2 report on long-term exposure to air pollution and mortality will be taken forward to calculations of the total impact of the effects on mortality of changes in long-term exposure to air pollution on mortality. This will be produced as a supplementary paper to the mortality report. A small group had met to discuss this and would present a proposed approach and provisional results at the next QUARK meeting.

Any other business

9. Some recent papers on swimming pools and asthma will be discussed at the next COMEAP meeting.

10. Plans to transfer the COMEAP website to an independent website are under discussion. A link on the DH website will remain.

Date of next meeting

11. The next meeting is due to be held on 23rd February 2007. Further meetings will be held on 22nd June 2007 and 12th October 2007.

Secretariat
November 2006

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