Urban air pollution and cardiovascular hospitalizations in Salvador, BA, Brazil: a time series study

INTRODUCTION: The urban air pollution have been associated with several health impacts, especially respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Salvador is a big city at developing countries with increase automotive fleet and pollution sources. The objective this study was to investigate the relationship between exposure urban air pollution and hospital admissions in the public health services (Sistema Unico de Saude – SUS) due to cardiovascular diseases (CVD) in the city of Salvador, from 2011 and 2012. METHODOLOGY: The design was ecological time series study. Daily records of particulate matter (PM10), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and ozone (O3) average were obtained from the air monitoring stations of Salvador. Explanatory variables were temperature and relative humidity. Hospital admissions were obtained from SUS database. Generalized linear polynomial distributed lag model was used to assess the effect of pollutants on the outcome. RESULTS: Ours results showed that S...