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Associations and burdens of relative humidity with cause-specific mortality in three Chinese cities

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Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the association between relative humidity (RH) and various cause of mortality, and then quantify the RH-related mortality fraction of low and high RH under the assumption that causal effects exist. Daily cause-specific mortality counts from 2008 to 2011, and contemporaneous meteorological data in three Chinese cities were collected. Distributed lag nonlinear models were adopted to quantify the nonlinear and delayed effects of RH on mortality risk. Low and high RH were defined as RH lower or higher than the minimum mortality risk RH (MMRH), respectively. Corresponding RH-related mortality fractions were calculated in the explanatory analysis. From the three cities, 736,301 deaths were collected. RH (mean ± standard deviation) were 50.9 ± 20.0 for Beijing, 75.5 ± 8.6 for Chengdu, and 70.8 ± 14.6 for Nanjing. We found that low RH in Beijing and high RH (about 80–90%) in Chengdu was associated with increased all-cause mortality risk. Both low and high RH may increase the CVD mortality risk in Beijing. Both low and high (about 80–85%) RH may increase the COPD mortality risk in Chengdu. Low RH (about < 45%) was associated with increased diabetes mortality risk in Nanjing. Effects of extreme low and extreme high RH were delayed in these cities, except that extreme low effects on COPD mortality appeared immediately in Chengdu. The effects of extreme low RH are higher than that of the extreme high RH in Beijing and Nanjing, while contrary in Chengdu. Finally, under the causal effect assumption, 6.80% (95% eCI: 2.90, 10.73) all-cause mortality and 12.48% (95% eCI: 7.17, 16.80) CVD deaths in Beijing, 9.59% (95% eCI: 1.38, 16.88) COPD deaths in Chengdu, and 23.79% (95% eCI: 0.92, 387.93) diabetes mortality in Nanjing were attributable to RH. Our study provided insights into RH-mortality risk, helped draw relative intervention policies, and is also significant for future predictions of climate change effects under different scenarios.

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Data availability

The data in this study were obtained from Cause of Death Registry System of Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention and were used under license, hence cannot be made public. However, data can be obtained from the corresponding author with the permission of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention.

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Funding

This study was supported by the China Prospective cohort study of Air pollution and health effects in Typical areas (C-PAT) (Grant No. MEE-EH-20190802); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. 3332019147); Peking Union Medical College Graduate Innovation Fund (No. 2019–1004-02); the China Medical Board (Grant No. 15–230); and the Chinese Academy of Medical Science Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (Grant No. 2017-I2M-1–009).

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Author notes

  1. Yayuan Mei and Ang Li contributed equally; therefore, they are joint first-coauthors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Institute of Basic Medical Sciences Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, School of Basic Medicine Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, 100005, China

    Yayuan Mei, Ang Li, Meiduo Zhao, Jing Xu, Jiaxin Zhao, Quan Zhou, Xiaoyu Ge & Qun Xu

  2. Center of Environmental and Health Sciences, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Peking Union Medical College, Beijing, 100005, China

    Yayuan Mei, Ang Li, Meiduo Zhao, Jing Xu, Jiaxin Zhao, Quan Zhou, Xiaoyu Ge & Qun Xu

  3. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Runkui Li

  4. State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Runkui Li

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  1. Yayuan Mei
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  2. Ang Li
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Contributions

Yayuan Mei: conceptualization, methodology, software, validation, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing. Ang Li: conceptualization, methodology, software, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing, funding acquisition. Meiduo Zhao: validation. Jing Xu: Validation. Runkui Li: Validation. Jiaxin Zhao: Validation. Quan Zhou: resources, validation. Xiaoyu Ge: resources, validation. Qun Xu: funding acquisition, supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Qun Xu.

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Mei, Y., Li, A., Zhao, M. et al. Associations and burdens of relative humidity with cause-specific mortality in three Chinese cities. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 3512–3526 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22350-z

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