High Environmental Ozone Levels and Extrinsic Skin Aging

Introduction: We have recently reported a positive association of high levels of tropospheric ozone (O3) with extrinsic skin aging in the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II). In the current analysis, we combined two German cohorts and added a measure of an accumulated O3 exposure. Material and Methods: We pooled two population-based cohorts: the older group of BASE-II participants (Berlin, 1,431 men and women aged 60–84) and the SALIA study (North Rhine-Westphalia, 806 women aged 67–80 years). We assessed facial coarse wrinkles and pigment spots as markers of extrinsic skin aging using the SCINEXATM tool. Five-year average residential exposure to O3 at the postcode level was modelled with the Optimal Interpolation method by the Federal Environmental Office (Umweltbundesamt-FGII4.2) as (1) acute high exposure as count of days with maximal hourly concentration of O3 ≥120 µg/m3(“exceedance“) and (2) the accumulated daily exposure to O3 ≥40 ppb from May to July (“AOT40...