Abstract
Climate change may be associated with human morbidity and mortality through direct and indirect effects. Ahvaz is one of the hottest cities in the world. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation between physiological Equivalent Temperature (PET) and non-accidental, cardiovascular and respiratory disease mortality in Ahvaz, Iran. Distributed Lag Non-linear Models (DLNM) combined with quasi-Poisson regression were used to investigate the effect of PET on death. The effect of time trend, air pollutants (NO2, SO2 and PM10), and weekdays were adjusted.The results showed that in cold stress [1st percentile of PET (2.7 °C) relative to 25th percentile (11.9 °C)] the risk of total respiratory mortality, respiratory mortality in men, and mortality in people under 65 year olds, significantly decreased in the cumulative lags of 0–2, 0–6 and 0–13; but the risk of respiratory mortality increased in the elderly and in the final lags. In contrast, heat stress [99th percentile of PET (44.9 °C) relative to 75th percentile (43.4 °C)] significantly increased the risk of total cardiovascular mortality (CVD), cardiovascular mortality in men, ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular disease mortality in lags 0 and 0–2. It seems that high PET values increase the risk of cardiovascular mortality, while low PET values increase respiratory mortality only among the elderly in Ahvaz.
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Abbreviations
- PET:
-
Physiological equivalent temperature
- NAD:
-
Non-accidental deaths
- CVD:
-
Cardiovascular deaths
- RD:
-
Respiratory deaths
- DLNM:
-
Lag non-linear models
- NO2 :
-
Nitrogen dioxide
- SO2 :
-
Sulfur dioxide
- PM10 :
-
Particles with a diameter of less than 10 µm
- EM:
-
Expectation maximization
- AIC:
-
Akaike information criteria
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express their gratitude to Ms. YaldaSabbaghan for her kind assistance.
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This study was funded and supported by Ahvaz Jundishapur University of Medical Sciences, Grant No: APRD-9706.
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SHB, EI and MD conceived and designed the project. KM acquired the data. MD and RSH analyzed and interpreted the data. MD, NK and NK wrote the paper. All authors approved the final text.
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Dastoorpoor, M., Khodadadi, N., Masoumi, K. et al. Physiological equivalent temperature (PET) and non-accidental, cardiovascular and respiratory disease mortality in Ahvaz, Iran. Environ Geochem Health 44, 2767–2782 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-021-01063-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-021-01063-1