The short-term harvesting effects of ambient particulate matter on mortality in Taiyuan elderly residents: A time-series analysis with a generalized additive distributed lag model

Huan Zhou; Hong Geng; Chuan Dong; Tao Bai

doi:10.1016/j.ecoenv.2020.111235

The short-term harvesting effects of ambient particulate matter on mortality in Taiyuan elderly residents: A time-series analysis with a generalized additive distributed lag model

Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 2021 Jan 1:207:111235. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2020.111235. Epub 2020 Sep 15.

Authors

Huan Zhou¹, Hong Geng², Chuan Dong³, Tao Bai⁴

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Environmental Science, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, China.
² Institute of Environmental Science, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, China. Electronic address: genghong@sxu.edu.cn.
³ Institute of Environmental Science, Shanxi University, Taiyuan, 030006, China. Electronic address: dc@sxu.edu.cn.
⁴ Department of pathology, the First Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, 030001, China.

PMID: 32942099
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2020.111235

Abstract

The evaluation on mortality displacement and distributed lag effects of airborne particulate matter (PM) on death risks is important to understand the positive association of short-term pollution from both ambient PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 with daily mortality. Herein, short-term influences of urban PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 exposure on the mortality of respiratory diseases (RD) and cardiovascular diseases (CVD) were studied at Taiyuan, China, a typical inland city suffering from heavy ambient PM loading and having high morbidity of RD and CVD. Using a time-series analysis with generalized additive distributed lag model (DLM), the potential mortality displacement was determined and the single-day and cumulative lag-day effects of PM on mortality were estimated after the daily mass concentrations of urban PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ from January 2013 to October 2015 and the daily number of non-accidental death (NAD) and cause-specific mortality in the residents aged more than 65 years old were obtained. Results showed there were significant associations of PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ with daily mortality on the current day and within one week. And a statistically significant increase (P < 0.05) in the cumulative effect estimates of PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ on CVD, ischemic heart disease (IHD), and myocardial infarction (MI) mortality (as well as PM_2.5 on NAD) was observed, while the associations of PM_2.5 with RD and pneumonia mortality, PM₁₀ with NAD and RD mortality were not statistically significant, when the exposure window was extended to lag 0-30 days. It was concluded that there were harvesting effects and cumulative effects of ambient PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ on the elderly residents' mortality due to RD and CVD at Taiyuan and they could be estimated quantitatively when the broader time window was used, suggesting that the underestimation on the association of ambient PM with non-accidental death can be avoided using the present method in our study.

Keywords: Ambient particulate matter; Generalized additive distributed lag model; Mortality displacement; Short-term effects.

MeSH terms

Aged
Air Pollutants / analysis
Air Pollution / analysis
Air Pollution / statistics & numerical data*
Cardiovascular Diseases / mortality*
China / epidemiology
Environmental Exposure / analysis
Environmental Exposure / statistics & numerical data*
Environmental Pollution / analysis
Humans
Particulate Matter / analysis*
Pneumonia
Research Design

Substances

Air Pollutants
Particulate Matter