Urban Air Pollution and Emergency Department Visits for Cardiac and Respiratory Diseases

Abstract

Air pollution affects various aspects of human health. Here, the associations between the number of emergency department visits for circulatory and respiratory problems and ambient air pollution in Toronto, Canada, in the period between April 2004 and December 2015 were studied. The health data were linked with urban air pollution data and weather factors. The conditional Poisson regression models were built for 18 strata (sex, age group, season), 8 exposure factors (air pollutants, indexes), and their 15 lags (0-14 days). Circulatory problems: the associations were intensified in the cold period (October - March) and were associated with the air quality health index (AQHI). The estimated relative risks for all patients in the cold period, for an increase of the AQHI by 1, at lags 0, 1, and 2 were 1.017 and 95% confidence interval (1.010, 1.024), 1.014 (1.007, 1.021), and 1.009 (1.002, 1.016). Respiratory problems: the analogous results for ozone and its increase by 12.8 ppb at lags 3, 4, and 5 were 1.052 (1.033, 1.161), 1.039 (1.020, 1.121), and 1.027 (1.008, 1.082). It was observed that exposure to certain air pollutants (nitrogen dioxide, ozone, and the AQHI index) are associated with increased emergency department visits in both cardiac and respiratory health problems.

Urban Air Pollution and Emergency Department Visits for Neoplasms and Outcomes of Blood Forming and Metabolic Systems

“…There is growing evidence of the positive associations between exposure to ambient air quality and various health conditions starting from respiratory outcomes to various cardiac problems. For instance, short-term exposure to fine particulate matter of 2.5 µm or less in aerodynamic diameter (PM 2.5 ) was positively associated with hospital admissions for seven major disease categories (e.g., endocrine, nervous system diseases, digestive diseases, nutritional and metabolic diseases, circulatory diseases, respiratory diseases, musculoskeletal and connective tissue diseases, and genitourinary diseases) [1][2][3]. Additionally, similar associations were observed for 35 minor disease categories and the same-day PM 2.5 exposure in both single and two-pollutant models (e.g., chronic ulcer of skin, diabetes mellitus, anemia, liver diseases, intestinal infection, gastrointestinal hemorrhage, urinary tract calculus, renal failure, and back problems) [4].…”