Exploring a more reasonable temperature exposure calculation method based on individual exposure survey and city-scale heat exposure impact assessment

Yiyi Wang; Yujia Huang; Fuzhen Shen; Ting Zhang; Jianlin Hu; Hao Chen; Lei Huang

doi:10.1016/j.envres.2022.113317

Exploring a more reasonable temperature exposure calculation method based on individual exposure survey and city-scale heat exposure impact assessment

Environ Res. 2022 Sep;212(Pt C):113317. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2022.113317. Epub 2022 May 2.

Authors

Yiyi Wang¹, Yujia Huang¹, Fuzhen Shen², Ting Zhang¹, Jianlin Hu³, Hao Chen⁴, Lei Huang⁵

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China.
² Department of Meteorology, University of Reading, Reading, RG6 6BX, UK.
³ Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center of Atmospheric Environment and Equipment Technology, Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Atmospheric Environment Monitoring and Pollution Control, Nanjing University of Information Science & Technology, Nanjing, 210044, China.
⁴ Jiangsu Meteorological Observatory, Nanjing, 210008, China.
⁵ State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China. Electronic address: huanglei@nju.edu.cn.

PMID: 35513062
DOI: 10.1016/j.envres.2022.113317

Abstract

The inability to quantify the difference between ambient temperature (AT) and personal exposure temperature (PET) is a common limitation in environmental health research. The actual exposure variability is underestimated when we used measurements from fixed monitoring stations to estimate PET. The study aims to explore a more reasonable temperature exposure calculation method to relate PET to AT and links heat exposure to adverse health events. We measured hourly PET of 129 participants from July 8th to July 13th, 2021 in Xinyi City, China. The linear mixed-effects model was used to build the relationship between hourly PET and AT in rural and town. Several calculation methods that can capture the intensity, frequency and duration of daily exposure were used to calculate the daily PET and AT and establish the relationship between the two factors. A generalized linear model was used to establish the relationship between city-scale AT indicators and health endpoints from January 1st, 2013 to December 31st, 2015 in Shanghai, China. The result showed that the hourly PET was significantly related to AT, wind speed, air pressure, precipitation, outside time, and air-conditioning use. Among several daily temperature indicators, we found that AT_DHAT (Degree Hours Above Threshold (27.4 °C)) was tight with the PET_DHAT in different regions (R² > 0.99). DHAT strengthened the relationship between daily AT and health endpoint in the urban-scale heat-related health impact study, especially in respiratory diseases. The method proposed in this study can improve the accuracy of future epidemiological studies on the effects of heat exposure.

Keywords: Ambient temperature; Degree hours above threshold; Mortality; Personal exposure temperature.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

China
Cities
Hot Temperature*
Humans
Temperature
Urban Health*