CAUSAL INFERENCE METHODS IN ENVIRONMENTAL EPIDEMIOLOGY: DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO EVALUATE THE HEALTH EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIAL AIR POLLUTION

This thesis represents not only the final milestone of my PhD program, but also the perfect conclusion to 7 years of research in the environmental epidemiology. I was lucky during all these years to be supported and helped by several people, that I would like finally to thank. First and foremost I wish to thank my advisors, Professor Rossella Miglio and MD Francesco Forastiere. I have been Rossella’s student since the age of nineteen, when I first started studying at the University of Bologna. She taught me everything I know regarding biostatistics and epidemiology, and guided me in my personal career, always leaving an open door for me to come back. And this is what happened. I couldn’t chose anyone else but her to be my PhD advisor. Rossella, I really want to thank you for always being there when I need, competent, kind and supportive. I also really want to thank Francesco, director of the Unit of Occupational Epidemiology at the Department of Epidemiology and my advisor for this thesis. He has been my mentor, inspiratory, my example of excellence as a researcher. During the time spent working together in Rome he has always been personally touched and involved in all the studies conducted, showing a passion that I have never seen anywhere else. Francesco, I want to thank you for infusing me, I hope, with at least a part of this passion. I can consider myself an epidemiologist thanks to you and your training. I would like to thank all the colleagues at the Department of Epidemiology in Rome, where I used to work until last year, especially Massimo, Daniela, Carla, Giulia, Chiara, Silvia, Francesca, Lisa, Martina, and many others, for their assistance, help, courage, strong emotions and support for staying sane during this doctoral adventure, and the years working together. I love you and I miss you a lot. The PhD can be very stressing and push you beyond your limits, especially when you have decided to leave your country and start a new life and a new job. I am lucky to have found amazing people who understood that and did everything to make this challenge easier. These people are my new colleagues in Paris, who, I think, where bored to be listening to me complaining every day because I could never rest after work to finish my thesis, that I had spent another weekend depressed studying...nevertheless, they were so understanding and always cheered me up. Among them I would like to thank in particular my new managers Perrine and Patricia, who gave me their unconditioned support and who believed in me. I would have never survived the first year of the PhD without my great colleagues of the 30° cycle in Bologna. They are all full of enthusiasm and optimism and remind me of how I used to be when I was their age. I haven’t gotten a chance to get to really know them since we’ve been all far the ones from the others in these past two years, but they’ve all been so friendly and I wish these younger students the best of luck.