The short-term effects of air pollution on respiratory diseases and lung cancer mortality in Hefei: A time-series analysis

Abstract Accumulating evidence has shown the effects of air pollution on respiratory disease and lung cancer mortality, but the evidence is still inconclusive to date. We conducted a time-series analysis, which included 10388 subjects, to assess the short-term effects of air pollution on respiratory disease and lung cancer mortality in Hefei, China, from 2009 to 2015. The mean concentrations of pollutants (PM 10 , NO 2 and SO 2 ) were 106.35, 30.40, and 20.66 μg/m 3 , respectively, during the study period. An increase of 10 μg/m 3 in SO 2 , NO 2 , and PM 10 was associated with 7.69% (95%CI: 3.41%–12.15%), 4.38% (95%CI: 1.33%–7.53%), and 1.55% (95%CI: 0.80%–2.30%) increase of respiratory diseases mortality, respectively. In contrast, lung cancer mortality was only significantly associated with SO 2 level. Subgroup analyses showed that female in respiratory disease patients were more sensitive to air pollution than male. Studies about seasonality of pollutants on respiratory and lung cancer mortality were inconsistent. Further analyses with multiple-pollutant model showed that the effects of pollutants were generally decreased after the other pollutants were adjusted, except the effects of SO 2 on lung cancer. These findings demonstrated that air pollution could evidently increase the respiratory disease and lung cancer mortality.