Background: in December 2015 Rome has been interested by a peculiar meteorological situation, with atmospheric stability, no rain and little wind. These factors, coupled with the high pollutant emissions typical of the winter pre-Christmas period (increased use of private cars and domestic heating), caused extreme peaks in air pollution concentrations persisting several weeks.
Objectives: describing daily trends in PM10 over two months, November and December 2015, and their impact on the health of the population of Rome.
Design: we analysed PM10 time series in Rome for November and December 2015. We estimated the association between daily PM10 concentrations and daily counts of deaths for natural and cardiorespiratory causes, and urgent hospitalizations/emergency-room visits for cardiorespiratory diseases, by use of Poisson regression models adjusted for time trends, influenza epidemics, and meteorology. These risk estimates have been used to quantify attributable deaths/admissions/visits due to exceedances of daily PM10 concentrations above EU-defined limit values in Rome for the period 29 November-30 December 2015.
Setting and participants: Rome, November and December 2015; population resident in Rome and deceased or hospitalized/ admitted to emergency rooms in hospitals within the city.
Main outcome measures: daily mortality for natural (0+ years), respiratory (0+) or cardiac (35+) causes; urgent (non-scheduled) hospitalizations or admissions to emergency room visits for respiratory (0+) or cardiac (35+) diseases.
Results: in December 2015, only three days (10th, 11th, and 26th December) had PM10 concentrations below the EU-limit value of 50 μg/m3. Over the 31 days under analysis (from 29 November to 29 December) we estimated 26 natural deaths attributable to PM10 concentrations above 50 μg/m3. Similarly, we estimated 20 and 30 attributable cases of cardiorespiratory hospitalizations and admissions to emergency room visits, respectively.
Conclusions: monitoring and control of anthropogenic emissions are mandatory in order to minimize the adverse health effects of air pollution, especially during air pollution peaks.