Ambient Air Pollution Is Associated With Increased Risk of Hospital Cardiac Readmissions of Myocardial Infarction Survivors in Five European Cities

Daily mortality and particulate matter in different size classes in Erfurt, Germany

“…Medication use in asthmatics also increased in association with the cumulative exposure to UFP over 5 or even 14 days (von Klot et al, 2002). Ru¨ckerl et al (2006) observe the highest increases in some blood markers in patients with coronary heart disease at a lag of 48 to 71 h. However, other studies observed immediate associations of UFP on mortality or morbidity, respectively (Forastiere et al, 2005;von Klot et al, 2005).…”

“…Evidence suggests that increased PM concentrations mainly affect the cardiovascular and respiratory systems (Peters et al, 1997a(Peters et al, , 1999Gold et al, 2000;Ibald-Mulli et al, 2001;Brook et al, 2002;Devlin et al, 2003;Schulz et al, 2005) and are especially associated with increased cardiovascular hospital admissions (Schwartz, 1999;Zanobetti et al, 2000;Le Tertre et al, 2002;D'Ippoliti et al, 2003;von Klot et al, 2005;Dominici et al, 2006) or increased cardiovascular mortality (Clancy et al, 2002;Forastiere et al, 2005;Zeka et al, 2005;Ostro et al, 2006). The physical or chemical particle properties (e.g.…”

“…Recently, adverse health effects were reported for elevated particle number concentrations (NC) in the ultrafine range Ibald-Mulli et al, 2002) including a decrease in peak expiratory flow (PEF) (Pekkanen et al, 1997;Peters et al, 1997b;Penttinen et al, 2001), increases in medication use of asthmatics (von Klot et al, 2002), increases in blood markers (Ru¨ckerl et al, 2006), repolarization changes in ischemic heart disease patients (Henneberger et al, 2005), increased hospital cardiac readmissions in myocardial infarction survivors (von Klot et al, 2005) and an increase in out-of-hospital coronary deaths (Forastiere et al, 2005). Associations of mortality with UFPs have been reported to be of approximately the same magnitude per interquartile range as with PM 2.5 but independent of the PM 2.5 associations in a 3-year study , reanalyzed by Sto¨lzel et al, 2003.…”

Determinants of personal and indoor PM2.5 and absorbance among elderly subjects with coronary heart disease

“…Persons with cardiovascular disorders are proposed to be especially vulnerable to the effects of particles on health (von Klot et al, 2005). Owing to their compromised health and high mean age, they usually spend more time at home and engage fewer activities than general population, and thus have potentially lower and less variable exposures.…”

On exposure and response relationships for health effects associated with exposure to vehicular traffic

“…Increased hospitalization (Hagen et al, 2000;Janssen et al, 2002;von Klot et al, 2005;Wellenius et al, 2005;Lanki et al, 2006a). Cardiac symptoms (Peters et al, 2004;Riediker et al, 2004;Schwartz et al, 2005;Lanki et al, 2006b;Adar et al, 2007b;Rosenlund et al, 2007b;Tonne et al, 2007).…”