The systematic evaluation of the results of time-series studies of air pollution is challenged by differences in model specification and publication bias.
We evaluated the associations of inhalable ...particulate matter (PM) with an aerodynamic diameter of 10 μm or less (PM
) and fine PM with an aerodynamic diameter of 2.5 μm or less (PM
) with daily all-cause, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality across multiple countries or regions. Daily data on mortality and air pollution were collected from 652 cities in 24 countries or regions. We used overdispersed generalized additive models with random-effects meta-analysis to investigate the associations. Two-pollutant models were fitted to test the robustness of the associations. Concentration-response curves from each city were pooled to allow global estimates to be derived.
On average, an increase of 10 μg per cubic meter in the 2-day moving average of PM
concentration, which represents the average over the current and previous day, was associated with increases of 0.44% (95% confidence interval CI, 0.39 to 0.50) in daily all-cause mortality, 0.36% (95% CI, 0.30 to 0.43) in daily cardiovascular mortality, and 0.47% (95% CI, 0.35 to 0.58) in daily respiratory mortality. The corresponding increases in daily mortality for the same change in PM
concentration were 0.68% (95% CI, 0.59 to 0.77), 0.55% (95% CI, 0.45 to 0.66), and 0.74% (95% CI, 0.53 to 0.95). These associations remained significant after adjustment for gaseous pollutants. Associations were stronger in locations with lower annual mean PM concentrations and higher annual mean temperatures. The pooled concentration-response curves showed a consistent increase in daily mortality with increasing PM concentration, with steeper slopes at lower PM concentrations.
Our data show independent associations between short-term exposure to PM
and PM
and daily all-cause, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality in more than 600 cities across the globe. These data reinforce the evidence of a link between mortality and PM concentration established in regional and local studies. (Funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and others.).
Air pollution is an important public health concern especially for children who are particularly susceptible. Latin America has a large children population, is highly urbanized and levels of ...pollution are substantially high, making the potential health impact of air pollution quite large. We evaluated the effect of air pollution on children respiratory mortality in four large urban centers: Mexico City, Santiago, Chile, and Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
Generalized Additive Models in Poisson regression was used to fit daily time-series of mortality due to respiratory diseases in infants and children, and levels of PM10 and O3. Single lag and constrained polynomial distributed lag models were explored. Analyses were carried out per cause for each age group and each city. Fixed- and random-effects meta-analysis was conducted in order to combine the city-specific results in a single summary estimate.
These cities host nearly 43 million people and pollution levels were above the WHO guidelines. For PM10 the percentage increase in risk of death due to respiratory diseases in infants in a fixed effect model was 0.47% (0.09–0.85). For respiratory deaths in children 1–5 years old, the increase in risk was 0.58% (0.08–1.08) while a higher effect was observed for lower respiratory infections (LRI) in children 1–14 years old 1.38% (0.91–1.85). For O3, the only summarized estimate statistically significant was for LRI in infants. Analysis by season showed effects of O3 in the warm season for respiratory diseases in infants, while negative effects were observed for respiratory and LRI deaths in children.
We provided comparable mortality impact estimates of air pollutants across these cities and age groups. This information is important because many public policies aimed at preventing the adverse effects of pollution on health consider children as the population group that deserves the highest protection.
Percentage increase in daily mortality for respiratory diseases in infants for a 10 μg/m3 raise in PM10 and O3 levels in single lag models, for Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Santiago and Mexico City, 1997–2005. Display omitted
•Air pollution has important impact on children and infant mortality in Latin-American cities.•PM10 and to a lesser degree O3 were associated with respiratory deaths in infants and children.•These results should inform policies to prevent adverse health effects in children.
Air pollution has important impact on children and infant mortality in Latin-American cities with PM10 and to a lesser degree O3 were associated with respiratory deaths.
Available data on the acute cardiovascular effect of ambient air pollution (AAP) in Latin America is limited considering that over 80% of its 1 billion inhabitants live in urban settlements with poor ...air quality. The study aim was to evaluate the association between Cardiovascular Emergency Department Visits (CEDVs) and AAP in Mexico City from 2016 to 2019 using generalized additive models with distributed lags to examine the percentage change of CEDVs and a backward approach of time-series model to calculate attributable fractions. A total of 48,891 CEDVs were recorded in a period of 1019 days. We estimated a significant percentage increase for each 10 μg/m3 of PM10 at Lag0-5 (2.8%, 95%CI 0.6–5.0), PM2.5 at Lag0-6 (3.7%, 95%CI 0.1–7.6), O3 at Lag0-5 (1.1%, 95%CI 0.2–2.0), NO2 at Lag0-4 (2.5%, 95%CI 0.3–4.7) and for each 1 mg/m3 of CO at Lag0 (6.6%, 95%CI 0.3–13.2). Overall, 10.3% of CEDVs in Mexico City may be related to PM10 exposure, 9.5% to PM2.5, 10.3% to O3, 11% to NO2 and 5.7% to CO. AAP significantly increase cardiovascular morbidity impacting on emergency medical services.
•Air pollutants are associated with a percentage increase of cardiovascular events.•Cardiovascular events are observed in the same day exposure to air pollution.•At least 10% of cardiovascular emergency visits are related to air pollutants.
Objectives This study aims to estimate the short-term preventable mortality and associated economic costs of complying with the World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines (AQGs) limit ...values for PM 10 and PM 2.5 in nine major Latin American cities. Methods We estimated city-specific PM-mortality associations using time-series regression models and calculated the attributable mortality fraction. Next, we used the value of statistical life to calculate the economic benefits of complying with the WHO AQGs limit values. Results In most cities, PM concentrations exceeded the WHO AQGs limit values more than 90% of the days. PM 10 was found to be associated with an average excess mortality of 1.88% with concentrations above WHO AQGs limit values, while for PM 2.5 it was 1.05%. The associated annual economic costs varied widely, between US$ 19.5 million to 3,386.9 million for PM 10 , and US$ 196.3 million to 2,209.6 million for PM 2.5 . Conclusion Our findings suggest that there is an urgent need for policymakers to develop interventions to achieve sustainable air quality improvements in Latin America. Complying with the WHO AQGs limit values for PM 10 and PM 2.5 in Latin American cities would substantially benefits for urban populations.
Respiratory diseases are a major component of morbidity in children and their symptoms may be spatially and temporally exacerbated by exposure gradients of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in large ...polluted urban areas, like the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA).
To analyze the association between satellite-derived and interpolated PM2.5 estimates with children's (≤9 years old) acute respiratory symptoms (ARS) in two probabilistic samples representing the MCMA.
We obtained ARS data from the 2006 and 2012 National Surveys for Health and Nutrition (ENSaNut). Two week average exposure to PM2.5 was assessed for each household with spatial estimates from a hybrid model with satellite measurements of aerosol optical depth (AOD-PM2.5) and also with interpolated PM2.5 measurements from ground stations, from the Mexico City monitoring network (MNW-PM2.5). We used survey-adjusted logistic regressions to analyze the association between PM2.5 estimates and ARS reported on children.
A total of 1,005 and 1,233 children were surveyed in 2006 and 2012 representing 3.1 and 3.5 million children, respectively. For the same years and over the periods of study, the estimated prevalence of ARS decreased from 49.4% (95% CI: 44.9,53.9%) to 37.8% (95% CI: 34,41.7%). AOD-PM2.5 and MNW-PM2.5 estimates were associated with significantly higher reports of ARS in children 0–4 years old OR2006 = 1.29 (95% (CI): 0.99,1.68) and OR2006 = 1.24 (95% CI: 1.08,1.42), respectively. We observed positive non-significant associations in 2012 in both age groups and in 2006 for children 5–9 years old. No statistically significant differences in health effect estimates of PM2.5 were found comparing AOD-PM2.5 or MNW-PM2.5 for exposure assessment.
Our findings suggest that PM2.5 is a risk factor for the prevalence of ARS in children and expand the growing evidence of the utility of new satellite AOD-based methods for estimating health effects from acute exposure to PM2.5.
•Evidence on acute health effects from PM2.5 using remote sensing data is limited.•We used satellite derived and ground level PM2.5 data for exposure assessment.•Acute respiratory symptoms in children 0–4 years old were associated with PM2.5.•We found significant associations with PM2.5 with both exposure methods in 2006.•Our inferences are representative of the entire Mexico City Metropolitan Area.
Recent studies have reported that air pollution exposure may have neurotoxic properties.
To examine longitudinal associations between prenatal particles less than 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5) exposure ...and neurodevelopment during the first two years of children's life.
Analysis was conducted in PROGRESS, a longitudinal birth cohort between 2007 and 2013 in Mexico City. We used satellite data to predict daily PM2.5 concentrations at high spatial resolution. Multivariate mixed-effect regression models were adjusted to examine cognitive, language and motor scores in children up to 24 months of age (n = 740) and each trimester-specific and whole pregnancy exposure to PM2.5. Results: Models adjusted by child sex, gestational age, birth weight, smoking and mother's IQ, showed that each increase of 1 μg/m3 of PM2.5 was associated with a decreased language function of −0.38 points (95% CI: −0.77, −0.01). PM2.5 exposure at third trimester of pregnancy contributed most to the observed association.
Our findings suggest that language development up to 24 months of age may be particularly sensitive to PM2.5 exposure during pregnancy.
ABSTRACT
Scorpion stings are a major public health concern representing a frequent cause of intoxication in many countries. The present study aims to examine the impact of climate variability in ...different climatic regions of the state of Morelos in Mexico on the incidence of scorpion stings. An ecological study was conducted using a retrospective time‐series analysis. Weekly reported scorpion sting cases from the Unique System of Information for Epidemiological Surveillance (SUIVE) and daily temperature and precipitation from the National Meteorological Service were obtained from 1999 to 2007. The geographical region of study was divided according three climatic conditions into Hot region (HR), Warm region (WR) and Cold region (CR). Generalized Linear Models were used to estimate the percent change 95% confidence intervals (CI) of scorpion sting cases associated to an increase of 1 °C of temperature and 1 cm of precipitation in each climatic region. During the period of study there were 281 076 scorpion sting cases reported in the State of Morelos, Mexico. Positive correlations among temperature and scorpion sting cases were found (R = 0.59 and 0.70 in the HR and WR, respectively). Regions with the hottest temperatures had the greatest effect, showing a 9.8% (CI 95%: 8.30–11.30) increase in scorpion sting cases per 1 °C increased in temperature. Increase in minimum and maximum temperatures have a delayed effect on scorpion stings cases and these may vary by climatic region.
An analysis was conducted with time series of precipitation, minimum and maximum temperature as well as weekly scorpion sting cases to explore the impact of changes in temperature and precipitation on the scorpion sting incidence in different climatic regions of the state of Morelos, Mexico, from 1999 to 2007. The study area was divided into cold, warm and hot according to the climatic conditions.
Climate change (CC) is the most important challenge of our time, a long-term global problem and one of the most serious global threats to human health in the future. CC is the expression of changes ...in temperature and water cycle, floods and drought events, extreme heat waves and sea level rise. Children are particularly vulnerable because they are highly sensitive to climate changes. The main environmental hazards affecting children's health are poor household drinking water quality and availability, lack access to adequate sanitary facilities, poor hygiene practices, outdoor and indoor air pollution, vector-borne diseases, chemical hazards, and unintentional injuries. Except for some unintentional injuries, these environmental hazards are associated to CC.
Objetivo. Resumir y analizar la evidencia de la asociación entre Covid-19 y factores climáticos. Material y métodos. Se utilizó la metodología de revisiones rápidas de Cochrane. Se buscaron artículos ...publicados del 1 de enero al 27 de abril de 2020 en una base de datos académica y preprints. Los títulos y resúmenes fueron revisados por dos investigadores y los textos completos por cinco investigadores. Resultados. De 354 artículos identificados, 26 cumplieron los criterios de elegibilidad establecidos. De éstos, 20 observaron una asociación inversa. Al evaluar su calidad, nueve calificaron con validez moderada, porque si bien ajustaron por covariables en el análisis, son estudios ecológicos. Conclusiones. A pesar de la homogeneidad de resultados, los factores climáticos explican un porcentaje pequeño de la variación de Covid-19. Son necesarios estudios con periodo de análisis más largo que capten tendencia y estacionalidad e incluyan factores de riesgo individuales.
Multi-city studies assessing the association between acute exposure to temperature and mortality in Latin American are limited. To analyze the short-term effect of changes in temperature (increase ...and decrease) on daily non-external and cardiovascular mortality from 1998 to 2014, in people 65 years old and over living in 10 metropolitan areas of Mexico. Analyses were performed through Poisson regression models with distributed lag non-linear models. Statistical comparison of minimum mortality temperature (MMT) and city-specific cutoffs of 24-h temperature mean values (5th/95th and 1st/99th percentiles) were used to obtain the mortality relative Risk (RR) for cold/hot and extreme cold/extreme hot, respectively, for the same day and lags of 0–3, 0–7, and 0–21 days. A meta-analysis was conducted to synthesize the estimates (RR
pooled
). Significant non-linear associations of temperature-mortality relation were found in U or inverted J shape. The best predictors of mortality associations with cold and heat were daily temperatures at lag 0–7 and lag 0–3, respectively. RR
pooled
of non-external causes was 6.3% (95%CI 2.7, 10.0) for cold and 10.2% (95%CI 4.4, 16.2) for hot temperatures. The RR
pooled
for cardiovascular mortality was 7.1% (95%CI 0.01, 14.7) for cold and 7.1% (95%CI 0.6, 14.0) for hot temperatures. Results suggest that, starting from the MMT, the changes in temperature are associated with an increased risk of non-external and specific causes of mortality in elderly people. Generally, heat effects on non-external and specific causes of mortality occur immediately, while cold effects occur within a few days and last longer.
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