Association of ambient ozone with pneumonia hospital admissions in Hong Kong and Taipei: A tale of two Southeast Asian cities

Environment International

Yen-Chun Fan¹  Chyi-Huey Bai²  Steve Hung-Lam Yim²  Hong Qiu³  Kai-Jen Chuang⁴  Tze-Wai Wong⁴  Kin-Fai Ho⁴  Ta-Pang Chang⁴ 

[1] Corresponding authors at: The Jockey Club School of Public Health and Primary Care, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (K.-F. Ho), Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, 250 Wu-Hsing Street, Taipei City 110, Taiwan (K.-J. Chuang).;Department of Public Health, School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan;Institute of Environment, Energy and Sustainability, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region;School of Public Health, College of Public Health, Taipei Medical University, Taipei, Taiwan;

关键词: Generalized additive distributed lag model;    Ground-level ozone;    Hospital admissions;    Pneumonia;    Time-series study;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Ozone (O3) is a reactive oxidant exerting both inflammatory and oxidative damages to the respiratory system. With the ground-level O3 progressively increasing in the past decade, the reevaluation of the pneumonia hospitalization risk from exposure to O3 is of public health interest. We conducted an ecological time-series study to examine the city-specific association between short-term O3 exposure and pneumonia hospitalizations in Hong Kong and Taipei, respectively. We linked the daily pneumonia hospitalization count to air pollution concentrations and weather conditions according to the date of admission during 2010–2017. We applied a generalized additive distributed lag model to examine the association while adjusting for time-varying covariates. Stratified analysis by age group and the potential harvesting effect of O3 were evaluated. We observed the harvesting effects of O3 on pneumonia hospitalizations in children in both cities and adults in Taipei. The short-term effect of O3 lasted for around one week. An interquartile range (IQR) increment of daytime 8-hour mean concentration of O3 distributed over 0–6 lag days in Hong Kong (42.4 μg/m3) was associated with a 7.04% (95% CI: 5.35–8.76%) increase in hospital admissions for elderly pneumonia, while the corresponding cumulative excess risk per IQR increment of O3 in Taipei (38.7 μg/m3) was 3.41% (95% CI: 1.63–5.22%). Different O3 metrics, varying degrees of freedom for filtering the temporal trend, and three-pollutant models supported the robustness of the associations. We concluded that short-term O3 exposure was associated with pneumonia hospitalizations in the elderly population. Understanding the pneumonia hospitalization risk of O3 will help to inform public health policies in the planning of ozone control strategies and intervention measures to prevent ozone-related pneumonia in vulnerable elderly populations.

【 授权许可】

Unknown