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The effects of air pollution and meteorological factors on measles cases in Lanzhou, China

Environmental Science and Pollution Research volume 27, pages 13524–13533 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

By collecting daily data on measles cases, air pollutants, and meteorological data from 2005 to 2009 in Chengguan District of Lanzhou City, semi-parametric generalized additive model (GAM) was used to quantitatively study the impact of air pollutants and meteorological factors on daily measles cases. The results showed that air pollutants and meteorological factors had effect on the number of daily measles cases, and there was a certain lag effect. Except for SO2 and relative humidity, other factors showed statistically significant associations with daily measles cases: NO2 lag 6 days, PM10 and maximum temperature lag 5 days, minimum temperature and average temperature and average air pressure lag 4 days, visibility, and wind speed lag 3 days had the greatest impact on the number of daily measles cases. Under the optimum lag conditions, the number of daily measles cases increased by 15.1%, 17.6%, 7.0%, 116.6%, 98.6%, 85.7%, and 14.4% with the increase of 1 IQR in SO2, NO2, PM10, maximum temperature, minimum temperature, average temperature, and wind speed; with the increase of 1 IQR in average pressure, relative humidity, visibility, and daily measles cases decreased by 12.8%, 9.7%, and 13.1%, respectively. And different factors showed different seasonal effects. The effects of SO2 and temperature factors on daily measles cases were greater in spring and winter, but PM10 in summer.

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Acknowledgments

We appreciate the Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the Chengguan District of Lanzhou for providing disease data, Environmental Monitoring Station of Lanzhou for providing ambient air pollution data, and the Meteorological Bureau of Gansu Province for providing meteorological data. Also, we thank the editors and reviewers for helping improve the quality of this article.

Funding

This work was supported by the Premium Funding Project for Academic Human Resources Development in Beijing Union University: BPHR2017CZ03 and the National Key R&D Program of China under contract 2016YFC0206201.

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Author notes

  1. Lu Peng and Xiuge Zhao contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Western China’s Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Lu Peng, Xiuge Zhao, Yan Tao & Ju Huang

  2. Key Laboratory for Environmental Pollution Prediction and Control, Gansu Province, College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, 222 Tianshui South Road, Chengguan District, Lanzhou, 730000, Gansu Province, People’s Republic of China

    Lu Peng, Xiuge Zhao, Yan Tao & Ju Huang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China

    Xiuge Zhao

  4. College of Biochemical Engineering, Beijing Union University, 97 North Fourth Ring East Road, Chaoyang District, Beijing, 100023, China

    Shengquan Mi

  5. South China Institute of Environmental Sciences, Ministry of Ecology and Environmental of PRC, Guangzhou, 510655, China

    Qinkai Zhang

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  1. Lu Peng
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Correspondence to Yan Tao or Shengquan Mi.

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Peng, L., Zhao, X., Tao, Y. et al. The effects of air pollution and meteorological factors on measles cases in Lanzhou, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 27, 13524–13533 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-07903-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-020-07903-4

Keywords

  • Measles
  • Air pollution
  • Meteorological factors
  • Generalized additive model
  • Lanzhou