Associations between Weather, Air Quality and Moderate Extreme Cancer-Related Mortality Events in Augsburg, Southern Germany

Abstract

While many authors have described the adverse health effects of poor air quality and meteorological extremes, there remain inconsistencies on a regional scale as well as uncertainty about the single and joint effects of atmospheric predictors. In this context, we investigated the short-term impacts of weather and air quality on moderate extreme cancer-related mortality events for the urban area of Augsburg, Southern Germany, during the period 2000–2017. First, single effects were uncovered by applying a case-crossover routine. The overall impact was assessed by performing a Mann–Whitney U testing scheme. We then compared the results of this procedure to extreme noncancer-related mortality events. In a second step, we found periods with contemporaneous significant predictors and carried out an in-depth analysis of these joint-effect periods. We were interested in the atmospheric processes leading to the emergence of significant conditions. Hence, we applied the Principal Component Analysis to large-scale synoptic conditions during these periods. The results demonstrate a strong linkage between high-mortality events in cancer patients and significantly above-average levels of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and particulate matter (PM2.5) during the late winter through spring period. These were mainly linked to northerly to easterly weak airflow under stable, high-pressure conditions. Especially in winter and spring, this can result in low temperatures and a ground-level increase and the accumulation of air pollution from heating and traffic as well as eastern lateral advection of polluted air. Additionally, above-average temperatures were shown to occur on the days before mortality events from mid-summer through fall, which was also caused by high-pressure conditions with weak wind flow and intense solar radiation. Our approach can be used to analyse medical data with epidemiological as well as climatological methods while providing a more vivid representation of the underlying atmospheric processes.

Ambient air pollution as a time-varying covariate in the survival probability of childhood cancer patients in the upper Northern Thailand

“…Although the relationship between adult cancer mortality and specific air pollutant exposure, including PM 2.5 [17-19, 21-23, 37-42], PM 10 [19,[21][22][23][43][44][45][46], NO 2 [19,20,22,23,47,48], SO 2 [20,[47][48][49][50], CO [20], and O 3 [20,51], has been extensively investigated, the association between air pollution and the survival rate of children with cancer has not.…”

“…The exposure to air pollution will deteriorate the health and treatment outcome of childhood cancer patients. Several studies in adult patients with cancer found a relationship between cancer mortality and air pollution exposure [18][19][20][21][22][23]. However, the risk of childhood cancer mortality with air pollution was not clearly elucidated.…”

Determination of the influence of weather and air constituents on aortic aneurysm ruptures

“…We have developed our own case-crossover procedure for this purpose, based on the approaches of Pinheiro et al. (2014) and Olschewski et al. (2021) :…”

Development of Air Quality Boxes Based on Low-Cost Sensor Technology for Ambient Air Quality Monitoring

“…For the classical air pollutants, which include particulate matter (PM), ozone (O 3 ), nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ), carbon monoxide (CO) and sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), an improved assessment of their adverse effects on health in low-, mid- and high-income countries took place in the last 15 years, achieved, for instance, through the progress in measurements, modelling, data availability and exposure analysis [ 2 ]. Olschewski et al have shown that high-mortality events of patients with cancer are strongly linked with above-average levels of NO 2 and PM2.5 during unfavorable weather conditions in late winter until spring, which leads to the accumulation of polluted air [ 3 ]. Generally, weather conditions and the atmospheric state influence the transport, mixing ratio, transformation and deposition of air substances; hence they are important factors defining the air quality level [ 4 , 5 , 6 ].…”