The burden of overall and cause-specific respiratory morbidity due to ambient air pollution in Sichuan Basin, China: A multi-city time-series analysis

Few studies have investigated the respiratory morbidity burden due to ambient air pollution in China, especially in a multi-city setting. This study aimed to estimate the short-term effects of ambient air pollutants (PM10, PM2.5, NO2 and SO2) on hospital admissions (HAs) for overall and cause-specific respiratory diseases, as well as the associated burden in 17 cities of Sichuan Basin, China during 2015–2016. Firstly, city-specific effect estimates for each pollutant on respiratory HAs were obtained using generalized additive model with quasi-Poisson link, and then random- or fixed-effects meta-analysis was applied to pool the effect estimates at the regional level. Subgroup analyses by sex, age, season and region were also performed. A total of 757,712 respiratory HAs were collected from all the tertiary and secondary hospitals located in the 17 cities. Risks of HAs for overall and cause-specific respiratory diseases were elevated following increased PM10, PM2.5, NO2 and SO2 exposure. An increase of 10 μg/m3 in PM10 at lag01, PM2.5 at lag01, NO2 at lag0 and SO2 at lag02 was associated with a 0.43% (95% CI: 0.33%, 0.53%), 0.53% (95% CI: 0.39%, 0.68%), 2.36% (95% CI: 1.75%, 2.98%) and 2.54% (95% CI: 1.51%, 3.59%) increases in total respiratory HAs, respectively. Children (≤ 14 years) and elderly (≥ 65 years) appeared to be more vulnerable to the effects of ambient air pollutants. Comparing to the WHO's air quality guidelines, we estimated that 1.84% (95%CI: 1.42%, 2.25%), 1.73% (95%CI: 1.27%, 2.19%) and 0.34% (95%CI: 0.21%, 0.48%) of respiratory HAs were due to PM10, PM2.5 and SO2 exposure, respectively. This study suggests that air pollution might be an important trigger of respiratory admissions, and result in substantial burden of HAs for respiratory diseases in Sichuan Basin.