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Association between exposure to air pollutants and allergic diseases among residents near the Gwangyang industrial complex in Korea

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Abstract

Objective

The purpose of this study is to characterize the levels of particulate matter (PM10) and heavy metals (HMs) such as Cd and Pb, compare blood HMs (B-HMs) and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) levels and examine the prevalence of allergic diseases among general population living near the Gwangyang industrial complex (GIC).

Methods

A survey and environmental and biomonitoring sample collection were done as part of a study involving 300 residents who were 20 years of age and older. To compare, the participants were split into two groups: those with physician-diagnosed allergic diseases (PDAD) and without physician-diagnosed allergic diseases (non-PDAD). ICP/MS and GF/AAS were used to measure the HMs in PM10 and B-HMs. SPSS version v25.0 was used to analyze the data to identify risk factors between exposure and diseases.

Results

The levels of three air pollutants close to road transport (≤ 50 m) and industrial complex areas (≤ 5 km) were higher than those over 100 m and 15 km from each source. The GMs for the PDAD group were 0.97 μg/L in B-Cd and 1.04 μg/dL in serum hs-CRP, significantly higher than 0.86 μg/L and 0.71 μg/dL in the non-PDAD group. In the PDAD, the mean B-Pb in males was significantly higher than that in females. The mean B-Pb among locals close to the GIC area (≤ 5 km) was significantly higher than that over 15 km. We found several risk factors, including gender, daily average housing, and distance to road transport, were significantly related to the increased levels of B-HMs.

Conclusions

A significant association was found between higher levels of environmental exposure to PM10 and HMs, B-HMs and hs-CRP levels with an increased prevalence of PDAD. This study provided the information required to carry out a risk assessment and take measures to mitigate the potential health risk in the GIC area.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Soonchunhyang University Brain Korea 21 and Korea Ministry of Environment (2016001360009).

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Author notes

  1. Sunghyeon Jung and Jae-Hyoun Kim have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Environmental Health Science, Soonchunhyang University, Asan, 31538, Korea

    Sunghyeon Jung, Seung-Woo Jeong, Jong-Wha Lee & Bu-Soon Son

  2. Department of Functional Food, Hanyang University, 222, Wangsimni-ro, Seongdong-gu, Seoul, 04763, Korea

    Jae-Hyoun Kim

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Correspondence to Jong-Wha Lee or Bu-Soon Son.

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Conflict of interest

Sunghyeon Jung, Jae-Hyoun Kim, Seung-Woo Jeong, Jong-Wha Lee and Bu-Soon Son declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

The study was conducted according to the guidelines of the Declaration of Helsinki and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) of Seoul National University Hospital (IRB approval code 1608-138-787).

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Written informed consent was obtained from all participants in this study.

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Jung, S., Kim, JH., Jeong, SW. et al. Association between exposure to air pollutants and allergic diseases among residents near the Gwangyang industrial complex in Korea. Toxicol. Environ. Health Sci. 15, 425–435 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13530-023-00193-6

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