Air Quality Atmosphere and Health最新文献

Air pollution has been recognized as a significant environmental risk factor with potentially adverse effects on women’s reproductive health. This study presents the existing literature on air pollution exposure and its link to spontaneous abortion (SAB) utilizing a systematic literature review (SLR) and bibliometric analysis (BA). Firstly, SLR was employed to collect relevant articles based on specified inclusion/exclusion criteria and formulated research questions. Secondly, BA was used to map and assess research trends, current knowledge, and structure using network analysis constructed on citation, co-citation, co-occurrence, and collaboration patterns among articles, authors, keywords, and institutions, respectively. Thematic analysis identified emerging and crucial research areas. This review encompasses 45 articles investigating short- and long-term exposure to single pollutants (n = 18) and multi-air pollutants (n = 27). Particulate matter–PM_2.5 (n = 12 of 16) and PM₁₀ (n = 10 of 14), and NO₂ (n = 8 of 14) demonstrated the most consistent associations with SAB followed by SO₂ (n = 5 of 9) and O₃ (n = 3 of 6), while CO (n = 4 of 6), PAH (n = 1 of 2), BC, and heavy metal (n = 1 of 1 each) showed inconsistent associations. This study reports considerable heterogeneity between studies concerning study design, air pollution exposure assessment, and outcome assessment. Studies of this nature present immense challenges and demand a standard protocol and a multi-disciplinary strategy involving scientists, epidemiologists, governments, and policymakers. Finally, systematic mapping and analysis performed in this study provide valuable insights into future research paths, offering a roadmap for further investigation.

Long-term trends in PM_2.5-attributable cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and subtypes mortality remain unclear between China and India, facing dual challenges of aging and severe air pollution. We aim to compare long-term trends and age-, period-, and cohort-effects changes in PM_2.5-attributable CVD and subtypes mortality in China and India from 1990 to 2019. Data are derived from Global burden of disease 2019. Long-term trends and age-, period-, and cohort-effects changes were evaluated by join-point regression and age-period-cohort models. We found that in China, the age-standardized mortality rate in CVD potentially increased in 1990–2012, followed by a significant downwards trend in 2013–2019, while the rate was obviously upward in India from 1990 to 2019. The impact of PM_2.5 on CVD and subtypes mortality increased sharply with age in both countries. The period risk ratios (RRs) began to significantly decline in 2010–2014 in China, while India revealed a noticeable increase during the 30 years. The cohort RRs are still increasing among the younger generation in China, while the impact in India is not as pronounced. These findings suggest that the older adults are more susceptible to the effects of PM_2.5. And compared with India, the PM_2.5 hazards in China have begun to reduce because of the early implementation of strict air pollution control policies, suggesting that it is more necessary for India to conduct strict and efficient air pollution control policies to increase the health benefits.

Until now, evidence for acute effects of ambient air pollution exposure on hospital admissions for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the semi-arid Loess Plateau is scarce. We aimed to examine the association between short-term ambient air pollution and daily COPD admissions in Dingxi, China. Daily COPD hospital admissions data during 2018–2020 were acquired from all the tertiary and secondary hospitals in Dingxi. Air pollution and meteorological data over the same periods were also collected. A Poisson generalized additive models (GAM), combined with a distributed lag nonlinear model (DLNM), were employed to evaluate the association between ambient air pollution and hospital admission among patients with COPD. Stratified analyses by gender, age, and season were also performed. Our results showed that PM_2.5, PM₁₀, NO₂, CO, and O₃8 h were associated with COPD-related hospitalizations, and no significant influence of SO₂ was found on COPD hospital admission. When the concentration of PM_2.5 (lag07), PM₁₀ (lag07), NO₂ (lag03), and CO (lag07) increased by 10 μg/m³, the daily number of COPD admissions increased by 11.55% (95%CI, 6.35%, 17.01%), 2.50% (95%CI, 1.04%, 3.99%), 7.17% (95%CI, 0.96%, 13.78%), and 0.46% (95%CI, 0.07%, 0.99%), respectively. Moreover, the associations differed by individual characteristics; the elderly (≥ 65 years) and males were highly susceptible. The effects of PM_2.5, PM₁₀, NO₂, and CO were more obvious in the cold season than in the warm season. This study indicates that exposure to PM_2.5, PM₁₀, NO₂, and CO is associated with COPD hospital admissions.

Although it is a growing area of investigation in the Global Dust Belt, only a few population-level studies have evaluated the human health associations of windblown dust in North America. We investigated whether acute, short-term dust exposures (DE), in Lubbock, Texas (a medium-sized, dust-prone city in the southern Great Plains, USA) were associated with significant increases in hospitalizations on the day of the exposure and up to 7 days afterward. We used the distributed lag non-linear models in time series analysis to describe non-linear relationship between response outcomes and the delayed effects of exposure over time. We found that increased relative risks of hospitalizations for multiple conditions were associated with the two DE approaches that occurred between 2010 and 2014. Consistent with prior studies of dust health effects in other cities in North America, we identified increased hospitalization risks in Lubbock due to neurodegenerative, atherosclerosis, renal, respiratory, asthma, mental, stroke, neoplasms, ischemia, hematologic, musculoskeletal, and associated diseases (aggregation of all causes each associated with at least 5% of hospitalizations) at various dust exposure days. Associations were modified by age, gender, day of the week, and holiday effects. As climate change increases water stresses on dryland agriculture and long periods of drought, dust exposures are likely to increase for residents of dryland cities and with it the likelihood of adverse health effects on people with preexisting conditions. Additional investigations are needed for other dust-prone population centers worldwide to document the health effects of dust exposures and investigate their causes.

The respiratory tract deposited fraction (DF) is the link between exposure and health effects of airborne particles. Here, we investigate how breathing pattern alterations at increasing physical activity affect DF in different regions of the respiratory tract and compare DF between adults and children (5 and 10 years old). We performed a literature review on the alteration of tidal volume with minute ventilation at increasing physical activity and used the results to model the size resolved (0.001–10 µm) DF, primarily using the deposition models from NCRP and Yeh and Schum (1980), but also MPPD. We found a shift in the deposited size distribution with increasing physical activity—DF of ultrafine particles increased in the alveolar region and decreased in the other regions, while DF of coarser particles decreased in the alveolar region and increased in the extra-thoracic region. Children had a 10–20% higher DF of ultrafine particles in the alveolar region compared to adults. We also present parametrizations of the daily average size resolved (0.005–5 µm) DF, accounting for varying physical activity throughout the day and oral/nasal breathing. These can be applied to any size distribution to estimate deposited doses. We found that deposited mass and number doses were more than twice as high for 5-year-olds compared to adults when normalized for body weight, primarily caused by their higher weight normalized minute ventilation. This demonstrates the importance of studying children’s exposure to air pollution and not only rely on data from adults.

Air quality assessment is an important task, due to the adverse effects of air pollution on human health. This importance is more highlighted when it comes to exceptional events such as war. Early 2022 witnessed the start of a military conflict between Ukraine and Russia. As with any similar event, this war influences the environment in different aspects. The objective of this study is air quality monitoring in Ukraine using Sentinel-5P imagery and Google Earth Engine. To this end, the monthly concentration of four gaseous pollutants including ozone (O₃), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), formaldehyde (HCHO), and carbon monoxide (CO) in 2022 is compared to 2019 and 2021 as business-as-usual (BAU) periods. Further statistical focus of this evaluation is on five major cities, namely Kiev, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Kherson, and Lviv. According to the results, the general trend of the O₃ concentration is found to be increasing, whereas NO₂, HCHO, and CO follow mostly a decreasing trend. However, the records of Lviv in terms of NO₂ and HCHO indicate significant discrepancies with other cities that are deemed warfronts. Moreover, based on the applied t-test, the differences between the 2022 concentrations and BAU years in most cases are statistically significant. In summary, this study revealed evident effects of the ongoing war on the anthropogenic activities in Ukraine and, consequently, changes in air pollution.

The sensitivity of air quality model responses to modifications in input data (e.g. emissions, meteorology and boundary conditions) or model configurations is recognized as an important issue for air quality modelling applications in support of air quality plans. In the framework of FAIRMODE (Forum of Air Quality Modelling in Europe, https://fairmode.jrc.ec.europa.eu/) a dedicated air quality modelling exercise has been designed to address this issue. The main goal was to evaluate the magnitude and variability of air quality model responses when studying emission scenarios/projections by assessing the changes of model output in response to emission changes. This work is based on several air quality models that are used to support model users and developers, and, consequently, policy makers. We present the FAIRMODE exercise and the participating models, and provide an analysis of the variability of O₃ and PM concentrations due to emission reduction scenarios. The key novel feature, in comparison with other exercises, is that emission reduction strategies in the present work are applied and evaluated at urban scale over a large number of cities using new indicators such as the absolute potential, the relative potential and the absolute potency. The results show that there is a larger variability of concentration changes between models, when the emission reduction scenarios are applied, than for their respective baseline absolute concentrations. For ozone, the variability between models of absolute baseline concentrations is below 10%, while the variability of concentration changes (when emissions are similarly perturbed) exceeds, in some instances 100% or higher during episodes. Combined emission reductions are usually more efficient than the sum of single precursor emission reductions both for O₃ and PM. In particular for ozone, model responses, in terms of linearity and additivity, show a clear impact of non-linear chemistry processes. This analysis gives an insight into the impact of model’ sensitivity to emission reductions that may be considered when designing air quality plans and paves the way of more in-depth analysis to disentangle the role of emissions from model formulation for present and future air quality assessments.

Chemical exposures should be measured to assess the health risks from chemicals in the work environment to workers. Passive air samplers (PAS) that do not require a power source are useful for assessing individual exposure to chemicals. Therefore, the International Organization for Standardization has determined ISO 16107 as the standard method for evaluating the performance of PAS devises. However, evaluation studies are limited due to the high cost of evaluation chambers. Here, we developed a novel chamber with a simple configuration and compact design in accordance with ISO 16107. The chamber successfully control temperature, humidity, wind speed, and VOC concentration, which are required in ISO 161017. We evaluated sampling rates of the PAS devises for toluene, ethylbenzene, and xylene as target volatile organic compounds (VOCs). The relative standard deviations of the sampling rates were below 10% under 7 conditions, demonstrating that the PAS devises had good accuracy for these VOC monitoring. The results in the present study revealed the usefulness of the developed chamber for accurately evaluating the performance of PAS devises. This study can contribute to improve workplace environments for monitoring chemical pollution by low-cost PAS devises.

The paper explores empirically the nexus of environmental quality, measured by carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, and human-health-capital formation, using covariates: real gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, inflation, and unemployment rate. This study uses a health expenditure approach and data from a panel of seven ASEAN countries from 1995 to 2020 within the health production function framework. The method of fully modified ordinary least squares (FMOLS) is implemented to estimate the long-run parameters and the Dumitrescu-Hurlin (Econ Model 29:1450–1460, 2012) test for the direction of causality. The empirical results reveal that high CO₂ emissions raise health expenditure as do inflation and unemployment rate. While rising income makes higher healthcare costs affordable, this fact might persuade policymakers to adopt measures to cut CO₂ to improve human-health-capital formation and thus to support long-run sustainable economic growth through healthy human capital formation.