Table 1.

Summary of studies on the effects of particulate matter on the kidneys

Study	Method	Subjects	Main result
O’Neill et al. (2008) [15]	Prospective cohort	6,814 Men and women aged 44–84 years who were free of clinical cardiovascular disease at baseline	Chronic and recent PM were not associated with current urinary albumin or microalbuminuria
Lue et al. (2013) [16]	Quantitative study of consecutive patients	Confirmed acute ischemic stroke patients aged ≥21 years, residing in the Boston (MA, USA) metropolitan region between 1999 and 2004	Exposure associated with living near a major roadway contributed to reduced renal function (via the estimated glomerular filtration rate)
Mehta et al. (2016) [17]	Prospective cohort	2,280 Male volunteers from the greater Boston area aged 21–80 years	Long-term PM2.5 exposure negatively affected renal function and increased renal function decline (via the estimated glomerular filtration rate)
Xu et al. (2016) [18]	Cross-sectional study	Renal biopsy series including 71,151 native biopsies at 938 hospitals spanning 282 cities in China between 2004 and 2014	Long-term exposure to high levels of PM2.5 was associated with an increased risk of membranous nephropathy.
Yang et al. (2017) [19]	Cross-sectional population-based study	21,656 Adults evaluated between 2007 and 2009 in New Taipei City who were participating in the Health Screening Program	Exposure during the previous year to PM10 and PMCoarse, but not PM2.5, was associated with reduced renal function and chronic kidney disease.
Raaschou-Nielsen et al. (2011) [21]	Retrospective cohort study	5 4,304 Participants in the Danish Diet Cancer and Health cohort	Nitrogen oxides were weakly associated with kidney cancer, without statistical significance.
Raaschou-Nielsen et al. (2017) [20]	Retrospective cohort study	European Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects included 14 cohorts of 289,002 participants, with at least 20 incident kidney parenchyma cancer cases during follow-up.	An increased risk of kidney cancer was associated with PM, although not to a statistically significant extent.

PM, particulate matter.