Acute effects of major air pollutants on hospital visits for upper respiratory tract infection in children in Xining District / 中国学校卫生

ABSTRACT

Objective@#To evaluate the acute effects of air pollutants (PM2.5,SO2 and NO2) on hospital visits for upper respiratory tract infection in children,and provide the reference for goverment to make effective interventional measures and to instruct prevention and protection of children’s health.@*Methods@#Daily meteorological data, air pollutants levels and hospital visits for upper respiratory tract infection in children between 2016 and 2018 were collected for analysis. The generalized linear model (GLM) based on Quasi-Poisson regression was used for estimating the acute effects of each pollutant on hospital visits for upper respiratory tract infection in children. The confounding factors of seasonal trend, long-term trends, meteorological factors, week effect were controlled in the model. The lag pattern of lag days (lag0-lag5) and moving average effect (lag01-lag05) was conducted. The excessive risk (ER) of hospital visits for upper respiratory tract infection in children with 95% confidence interval (95%CI) was calculated with an increase of 10 μg/m3 of PM2.5，SO2 and NO2 respectively.@*Results@#Seasonality was showed in the daily pollutants and hospital visits for upper respiratory tract infection in children from 2016 and 2018 in Xining. The average of annual PM2.5，SO2 and NO2 concentration were (47±28)(15+9)(35±17) μg/m3 respectively. The average number of hospital visits for upper respiratory tract infection in children was seventytwo persons. With an increase of 10 μg/m3 of PM2.5,SO2 and NO2 hospital visits for upper respiratory tract infection in children increased by 0.78% (95%C=0.39%-1.17%), 4.19% (95%CI=3.05%-5.34%) and 1.93% (95%CI=1.15%-2.71%) respectively. The three kinds of air pollutants all had certain lag effect.@*Conclusion@#The main air pollutants PM2.5，SO2 and NO2, have acute effects on hospital visits for upper respiratory tract infection in children in Xining district,thus,the work of preventing and controlling air pollution need to be furthur strengthened.