The comparison of mortality burden between exposure to dry-cold events and wet-cold events: A nationwide study in China

Abstract

Background: Most previous studies have focused on the health effect of temperature or humidity, and few studies have explored the combined health effects of exposure to temperature and humidity. This study aims to estimate the relationship between humidity-cold events and mortality, and then to compare the mortality burden between exposure to dry-cold events and wet-cold events, and finally to explore whether there was an additive interaction of temperature and humidity on mortality.

Methods: In the study, Daily mortality data during 2006-2017 were collected from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in China, and daily mean temperature and daily mean relative humidity data from 698 weather stations in China were obtained from the China Meteorological Data Sharing Service system. We first employed time-series design with a distributed lag nonlinear model and a multivariate meta-analysis model to examine the association between humidity-cold events with mortality.

Results: We found that humidity-cold events significantly increased mortality risk, and the effect of wet-cold events (RR:1.24, 95%CI:1.20,1.29) was higher than that of dry-cold events (RR:1.14, 95%CI:1.10,1.18). Dry-cold events and wet-cold events accounted for 2.41 % and 2.99 % excess deaths, respectively with higher burden for the elderly ≥85 years old, Central China and CVD. In addition, there is a synergistic additive interaction between low temperature and high humidity in winter.

Conclusion: This study showed that humidity-cold events significantly increased mortality risk, and the effect of wet-cold events was higher than that of dry-cold events.

Keywords: Additive interaction; Dry-cold events; Humidity; Mortality; Temperature; Wet-cold events.