•Multi-city study with highly standardized particle size distribution measurements.•We applied a novel multilevel model to meta-analyze site-specific results.•No clear associations for ultrafine ...particles (UFP) and cause-specific hospital admissions.•Consistent effects for larger particle size fractions and fine particles (PM2.5).•Higher respiratory hospital admission risk for children, and in the cold season.
Numerous studies have shown associations between daily concentrations of fine particles (e.g., particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter ≤2.5 µm; PM2.5) and morbidity. However, evidence for ultrafine particles (UFP; particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 10–100 nm) remains conflicting. Therefore, we aimed to examine the short-term associations of UFP with five cause-specific hospital admission endpoints for Leipzig, Dresden, and Augsburg, Germany.
We obtained daily counts of (cause-specific) cardiorespiratory hospital admissions between 2010 and 2017. Daily average concentrations of UFP, total particle number (PNC; 10–800 nm), and black carbon (BC) were measured at six sites; PM2.5 and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) were obtained from monitoring networks. We assessed immediate (lag 0–1), delayed (lag 2–4, lag 5–7), and cumulative (lag 0–7) effects by applying station-specific confounder-adjusted Poisson regression models. We then used a novel multi-level meta-analytical method to obtain pooled risk estimates. Finally, we performed two-pollutant models to investigate interdependencies between pollutants and examined possible effect modification by age, sex, and season.
UFP showed a delayed (lag 2–4) increase in respiratory hospital admissions of 0.69% 95% confidence interval (CI): −0.28%; 1.67%. For other hospital admission endpoints, we found only suggestive results. Larger particle size fractions, such as accumulation mode particles (particles with an aerodynamic diameter of 100–800 nm), generally showed stronger effects (respiratory hospital admissions & lag 2–4: 1.55% 95% CI: 0.86%; 2.25%). PM2.5 showed the most consistent associations for (cardio-)respiratory hospital admissions, whereas NO2 did not show any associations. Two-pollutant models showed independent effects of PM2.5 and BC. Moreover, higher risks have been observed for children.
We observed clear associations with PM2.5 but UFP or PNC did not show a clear association across different exposure windows and cause-specific hospital admissions. Further multi-center studies are needed using harmonized UFP measurements to draw definite conclusions on the health effects of UFP.
Evidence on health effects of ultrafine particles (UFP) is still limited as they are usually not monitored routinely. The few epidemiological studies on UFP and (cause-specific) mortality so far have ...reported inconsistent results.
The main objective of the UFIREG project was to investigate the short-term associations between UFP and fine particulate matter (PM)<2.5μm (PM2.5) and daily (cause-specific) mortality in five European Cities. We also examined the effects of PM<10μm (PM10) and coarse particles (PM2.5–10).
UFP (20–100nm), PM and meteorological data were measured in Dresden and Augsburg (Germany), Prague (Czech Republic), Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Chernivtsi (Ukraine). Daily counts of natural and cardio-respiratory mortality were collected for all five cities. Depending on data availability, the following study periods were chosen: Augsburg and Dresden 2011–2012, Ljubljana and Prague 2012–2013, Chernivtsi 2013–March 2014. The associations between air pollutants and health outcomes were assessed using confounder-adjusted Poisson regression models examining single (lag 0–lag 5) and cumulative lags (lag 0–1, lag 2–5, and lag 0–5). City-specific estimates were pooled using meta-analyses methods.
Results indicated a delayed and prolonged association between UFP and respiratory mortality (9.9% 95%-confidence interval: −6.3%; 28.8% increase in association with a 6-day average increase of 2750particles/cm3 (average interquartile range across all cities)). Cardiovascular mortality increased by 3.0% −2.7%; 9.1% and 4.1% 0.4%; 8.0% in association with a 12.4μg/m3 and 4.7μg/m3 increase in the PM2.5- and PM2.5–10-averages of lag 2–5.
We observed positive but not statistically significant associations between prolonged exposures to UFP and respiratory mortality, which were independent of particle mass exposures. Further multi-centre studies are needed investigating several years to produce more precise estimates on health effects of UFP.
•We investigated the associations between ultrafine and fine particles and (cause-specific) mortality in multiple locations.•The UFIREG study included cities from Central and Eastern European countries.•Results indicated a delayed and prolonged association between ultrafine particles and respiratory mortality.•PM2.5 and PM2.5–10 were associated with delayed increases in cardiovascular mortality.
Evidence of short-term effects of ultrafine particles (UFP) on health is still inconsistent and few multicenter studies have been conducted so far especially in Europe.
Within the UFIREG project, we ...investigated the short-term effects of UFP and fine particulate matter (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 μm PM
) on daily cause-specific hospital admissions in five Central and Eastern European cities using harmonized protocols for measurements and analyses.
Daily counts of cause-specific hospital admissions focusing on cardiovascular and respiratory diseases were obtained for Augsburg and Dresden (Germany), 2011-2012; Chernivtsi (Ukraine), 2013 to March 2014; and Ljubljana (Slovenia) and Prague (Czech Republic), 2012-2013. Air pollution and meteorologic data were measured at fixed monitoring sites in all cities. We analyzed city-specific associations using confounder-adjusted Poisson regression models and pooled the city-specific effect estimates using metaanalysis methods.
A 2,750 particles/cm
increase (average interquartile range across all cities) in the 6-day average of UFP indicated a delayed and prolonged increase in the pooled relative risk of respiratory hospital admissions (3.4% 95% confidence interval, -1.7 to 8.8%). We also found increases in the pooled relative risk of cardiovascular (exposure average of lag 2-5, 1.8% 0.1-3.4%) and respiratory (6-d average exposure, 7.5% 4.9-10.2%) admissions per 12.4 μg/m
increase (average interquartile range) in PM
.
Our findings indicated delayed and prolonged effects of UFP exposure on respiratory hospital admissions in Central and Eastern Europe. Cardiovascular and respiratory hospital admissions increased in association with an increase in PM
. Further multicenter studies are needed using harmonized UFP measurements to draw definite conclusions on health effects of UFP.
Residential wood combustion contributing to airborne particulate matter (PM10) was studied for 1 year at two sites in the village of Melpitz. Significant excess pollution was observed at the Melpitz ...center compared to that at the TROPOS research station Melpitz reference site, situated only 700 m away. Local concentration increments at the village site for the combustion PM constituents organic carbon, elemental carbon, levoglucosan, and benzoapyrene were determined under appropriate wind directions, and their winter mean values were 0.7 μg m–3, 0.3 μg m–3, 0.1 μg m–3, and 0.4 ng m–3, representing relative increases over the regional background concentration of 24, 70, 61, and 107%, respectively. Yearly, weekly, and diurnal profiles of village increments suggest residential heating as the dominant source of this excess pollution, mainly originating from wood combustion. Receptor modeling using positive matrix factorization quantified 4.5 μg m–3 wood combustion PM at the village site, representing an increment of 1.9 μg m–3 and an increase of ∼75% over the 2.6 μg m–3 regional background wood combustion PM. This increment varied with season, temperature, and boundary layer height and reached daily mean values of 4–6 μg m–3 during unfavorable meteorological conditions. Potential health effects were estimated and resulted in an all-cause mortality from short-term exposure to wood combustion PM of 2.1 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and year for areas with similar wood smoke levels as observed in Melpitz. The excess cancer risk from the concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons was 6.4 per 100,000. For both health metrics, the very local contributions from the village itself were about 40–50%, indicating a strong potential for mitigation through local-scale policies. A compilation of literature data demonstrates wood combustion to represent a major source of PM pollution in Germany, with average winter-time contributions of 10–20%. The present study quantifies the negative impacts of heating with wood in rural residential areas, where the continuous monitoring of air quality is typically lacking. Further regulation of this PM source is warranted in order to protect human health.
Exposure to ambient air pollution has been associated with adverse effects on morbidity and mortality. However, the evidence for ultrafine particles (UFPs; 10-100 nm) based on epidemiological studies ...remains scarce and inconsistent.
We examined associations between short-term exposures to UFPs and total particle number concentrations (PNCs; 10-800 nm) and cause-specific mortality in three German cities: Dresden, Leipzig, and Augsburg.
We obtained daily counts of natural, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality between 2010 and 2017. UFPs and PNCs were measured at six sites, and measurements of fine particulate matter (PM
; ⩽2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter) and nitrogen dioxide were collected from routine monitoring. We applied station-specific confounder-adjusted Poisson regression models. We investigated air pollutant effects at aggregated lags (0-1, 2-4, 5-7, and 0-7 d after UFP exposure) and used a novel multilevel meta-analytical method to pool the results. Additionally, we assessed interdependencies between pollutants using two-pollutant models.
For respiratory mortality, we found a delayed increase in relative risk of 4.46% (95% confidence interval, 1.52 to 7.48%) per 3,223-particles/cm
increment 5-7 days after UFP exposure. Effects for PNCs showed smaller but comparable estimates consistent with the observation that the smallest UFP fractions showed the largest effects. No clear associations were found for cardiovascular or natural mortality. UFP effects were independent of PM
in two-pollutant models.
We found delayed effects for respiratory mortality within 1 week after exposure to UFPs and PNCs but no associations for natural or cardiovascular mortality. This finding adds to the evidence on the independent health effects of UFPs.
Anthropogenic emissions are dominant contributors to air pollution.
Consequently, mitigation policies have been attempted since the 1990s in
Europe to reduce pollution by anthropogenic emissions. To ...evaluate the
effectiveness of these mitigation policies, the German Ultrafine Aerosol
Network (GUAN) was established in 2008, focusing on black carbon (BC) and
sub-micrometre aerosol particles. In this study, long-term trends of
atmospheric particle number concentrations (PNCs) and equivalent BC (eBC)
mass concentration over a 10-year period (2009–2018) were determined for 16
GUAN sites ranging from roadside to high Alpine environments. Overall,
statistically significant decreasing trends are found for most of these
parameters and environments in Germany. The annual relative slope of eBC
mass concentration varies between −13.1 % and −1.7 % per year. The
slopes of the PNCs vary from −17.2 % to −1.7 %, −7.8 % to −1.1
%, and −11.1 % to −1.2 % per year for 10–30, 30–200, and
200–800 nm size ranges, respectively. The reductions in various
anthropogenic emissions are found to be the dominant factors responsible for
the decreasing trends of eBC mass concentration and PNCs. The diurnal and
seasonal variations in the trends clearly show the effects of the mitigation
policies for road transport and residential emissions. The influences of
other factors such as air masses, precipitation, and temperature were also
examined and found to be less important or negligible. This study proves
that a combination of emission mitigation policies can effectively improve
the air quality on large spatial scales. It also suggests that a long-term
aerosol measurement network at multi-type sites is an efficient and
necessary tool for evaluating emission mitigation policies.
New aerosol particle formation (NPF) events play a significant role in altering aerosol concentrations and dispersion within the atmosphere, making them vital for both climate and air quality ...research. The primary objective of investigating NPF events is to precisely determine their occurrence dates. In this study, we introduced the ConvNeXt model for the first time to identify NPF events, and compared its performance with two other deep learning models, EfficientNet and Swin Transformer. Our main aim was to automate an objective identification and classification of NPF events accurately. All three models employed transfer learning to effectively capture critical features associated with NPF. Our results demonstrated that the ConvNeXt model significantly outperformed the other models, achieving an impressive accuracy rate of 95.3% on event days, surpassing EfficientNet (92.8%) and Swin Transformer (94.9%). Furthermore, we performed tests using different ConvNeXt variants (ConvNeXt-T/S/B/L/XL) and different pre-training weights, revealing that different configurations of ConvNeXt models exhibited improved NPF event recognition capabilities. Finally, we conducted generalizability experiments using the ConvNeXt-XL model, achieving the highest accuracy of 96.4% on event days. This study not only underscores the recognition prowess of ConvNeXt models but also highlights their practical utility in accurately detecting NPF events in real-world scenarios. This contribution aids in advancing our comprehension of aerosol dynamics in atmospheric environments, providing valuable insights for climate and air quality research.
•Employed ConvNeXt model, used transfer learning to identify NPF events.•Comparative analysis showed ConvNeXt's outstanding 95.3% accuracy.•Tests with different ConvNeXt variants demonstrated enhanced capabilities.•ConvNeXt-XL excelled, achieving 96.4% accuracy in generalization experiments.
•The phenomenology of urban ultrafine particles in 16 cities of Europe is presented.•N to S&E Europe increasing urban background concentration trends are evidenced.•Road traffic emissions is the main ...source of ultrafine particles in urban Europe.•High midday concentrations independent of traffic influence occur in many cities.•There is an urgent need to harmonize measurements and making the data open.
The 2017–2019 hourly particle number size distributions (PNSD) from 26 sites in Europe and 1 in the US were evaluated focusing on 16 urban background (UB) and 6 traffic (TR) sites in the framework of Research Infrastructures services reinforcing air quality monitoring capacities in European URBAN & industrial areaS (RI-URBANS) project. The main objective was to describe the phenomenology of urban ultrafine particles (UFP) in Europe with a significant air quality focus.
The varying lower size detection limits made it difficult to compare PN concentrations (PNC), particularly PN10-25, from different cities. PNCs follow a TR > UB > Suburban (SUB) order. PNC and Black Carbon (BC) progressively increase from Northern Europe to Southern Europe and from Western to Eastern Europe. At the UB sites, typical traffic rush hour PNC peaks are evident, many also showing midday-morning PNC peaks anti-correlated with BC. These peaks result from increased PN10-25, suggesting significant PNC contributions from nucleation, fumigation and shipping.
Site types to be identified by daily and seasonal PNC and BC patterns are: (i) PNC mainly driven by traffic emissions, with marked correlations with BC on different time scales; (ii) marked midday/morning PNC peaks and a seasonal anti-correlation with PNC/BC; (iii) both traffic peaks and midday peaks without marked seasonal patterns. Groups (ii) and (iii) included cities with high insolation.
PNC, especially PN25-800, was positively correlated with BC, NO2, CO and PM for several sites. The variable correlation of PNSD with different urban pollutants demonstrates that these do not reflect the variability of UFP in urban environments. Specific monitoring of PNSD is needed if nanoparticles and their associated health impacts are to be assessed. Implementation of the CEN-ACTRIS recommendations for PNSD measurements would provide comparable measurements, and measurements of <10 nm PNC are needed for full evaluation of the health effects of this size fraction.
This study aims to picture the phenomenology of urban ambient total lung deposited surface area (LDSA) (including head/throat (HA), tracheobronchial (TB), and alveolar (ALV) regions) based on ...multiple path particle dosimetry (MPPD) model during 2017–2019 period collected from urban background (UB, n = 15), traffic (TR, n = 6), suburban background (SUB, n = 4), and regional background (RB, n = 1) monitoring sites in Europe (25) and USA (1). Briefly, the spatial-temporal distribution characteristics of the deposition of LDSA, including diel, weekly, and seasonal patterns, were analyzed. Then, the relationship between LDSA and other air quality metrics at each monitoring site was investigated. The result showed that the peak concentrations of LDSA at UB and TR sites are commonly observed in the morning (06:00–8:00 UTC) and late evening (19:00–22:00 UTC), coinciding with traffic rush hours, biomass burning, and atmospheric stagnation periods. The only LDSA night-time peaks are observed on weekends. Due to the variability of emission sources and meteorology, the seasonal variability of the LDSA concentration revealed significant differences (p = 0.01) between the four seasons at all monitoring sites. Meanwhile, the correlations of LDSA with other pollutant metrics suggested that Aitken and accumulation mode particles play a significant role in the total LDSA concentration. The results also indicated that the main proportion of total LDSA is attributed to the ALV fraction (50 %), followed by the TB (34 %) and HA (16 %). Overall, this study provides valuable information of LDSA as a predictor in epidemiological studies and for the first time presenting total LDSA in a variety of European urban environments.
Display omitted
•Lung deposited surface area (LDSA) was investigated in 25 EU and one USA sites.•Peaks of total LDSA were recorded in 06:00–8:00 and 19:00–22:00 UTC in urban.•The seasonal changes of LDSA showed significant differences in its levels (p < 0.01).•Aitken and Accumulation mode particles play a significant role in the total LDSA.
Inter-annual trends of ultrafine particles in urban Europe Garcia-Marlès, Meritxell; Lara, Rosa; Reche, Cristina ...
Environment international,
March 2024, 2024-Mar, 2024-03-00, 20240301, 2024-03, 2024-03-01, Letnik:
185
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Ultrafine particles (UFP, those with diameters ≤ 100 nm), have been reported to potentially penetrate deeply into the respiratory system, translocate through the alveoli, and affect various organs, ...potentially correlating with increased mortality. The aim of this study is to assess long-term trends (5–11 years) in mostly urban UFP concentrations based on measurements of particle number size distributions (PNSD). Additionally, concentrations of other pollutants and meteorological variables were evaluated to support the interpretations. PNSD datasets from 12 urban background (UB), 5 traffic (TR), 3 suburban background (SUB) and 1 regional background (RB) sites in 15 European cities and 1 in the USA were evaluated. The non-parametric Theil-Sen’s method was used to detect monotonic trends. Meta-analyses were carried out to assess the overall trends and those for different environments. The results showed significant decreases in NO, NO2, BC, CO, and particle concentrations in the Aitken (25–100 nm) and the Accumulation (100–800 nm) modes, suggesting a positive impact of the implementation of EURO 5/V and 6/VI vehicle standards on European air quality. The growing use of Diesel Particle Filters (DPFs) might also have clearly reduced exhaust emissions of BC, PM, and the Aitken and Accumulation mode particles. However, as reported by prior studies, there remains an issue of poor control of Nucleation mode particles (smaller than 25 nm), which are not fully reduced with current DPFs, without emission controls for semi-volatile organic compounds, and might have different origins than road traffic. Thus, contrasting trends for Nucleation mode particles were obtained across the cities studied. This mode also affected the UFP and total PNC trends because of the high proportion of Nucleation mode particles in both concentration ranges. It was also found that the urban temperature increasing trends might have also influenced those of PNC, Nucleation and Aitken modes.
PDF
