Humans are routinely exposed to mixtures of chemical and other environmental factors, making the quantification of health effects associated with environmental mixtures a critical goal for establishing environmental policy sufficiently protective of human health. The quantification of the effects of exposure to an environmental mixture poses several statistical challenges. It is often the case that exposure to multiple pollutants interact with each other to affect an outcome. Further, the exposure-response relationship between an outcome and some exposures, such as some metals, can exhibit complex, nonlinear forms, since some exposures can be beneficial and detrimental at different ranges of exposure. To estimate the health effects of complex mixtures, we propose a flexible Bayesian approach that allows exposures to interact with each other and have nonlinear relationships with the outcome. We induce sparsity using multivariate spike and slab priors to determine which exposures are associated with the outcome and which exposures interact with each other. The proposed approach is interpretable, as we can use the posterior probabilities of inclusion into the model to identify pollutants that interact with each other. We utilize our approach to study the impact of exposure to metals on child neurodevelopment in Bangladesh and find a nonlinear, interactive relationship between arsenic and manganese.

中文翻译：

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使用贝叶斯半参数回归和稀疏诱导先验估计环境混合物对健康的影响

人类通常会暴露于化学和其他环境因素的混合物中，因此量化与环境混合物有关的健康影响成为制定足以保护人类健康的环境政策的关键目标。量化暴露于环境混合物的影响带来了一些统计挑战。通常，暴露于多种污染物会相互影响，从而影响结果。此外，结果与某些暴露（例如某些金属）之间的暴露-响应关系可能表现出复杂的非线性形式，因为某些暴露在不同的暴露范围内可能是有益且有害的。要估算复杂混合物对健康的影响，我们提出了一种灵活的贝叶斯方法，该方法允许曝光相互影响并与结果具有非线性关系。我们使用多元峰值和先验先验来诱发稀疏性，以确定哪些风险与结果相关，哪些风险相互影响。所提出的方法是可以解释的，因为我们可以使用模型中包含的后验概率来识别相互影响的污染物。我们利用我们的方法研究了金属暴露对孟加拉国儿童神经发育的影响，并发现了砷与锰之间的非线性相互作用关系。我们使用多元峰值和先验先验来诱发稀疏性，以确定哪些风险与结果相关，哪些风险相互影响。所提出的方法是可以解释的，因为我们可以使用模型中包含的后验概率来识别相互影响的污染物。我们利用我们的方法研究了金属暴露对孟加拉国儿童神经发育的影响，并发现了砷与锰之间的非线性相互作用关系。我们使用多变量峰值和先验先验来诱发稀疏性，以确定哪些风险与结果相关以及哪些风险相互影响。所提出的方法是可以解释的，因为我们可以使用模型中包含的后验概率来识别相互影响的污染物。我们利用我们的方法研究了金属暴露对孟加拉国儿童神经发育的影响，并发现了砷与锰之间的非线性相互作用关系。