Abstract
As the health impacts of climate change take on a more serious form, this study for the first time investigates the effect of meteorological factors on the risk of death from respiratory diseases (RD) in Wuhu, a representative city along the Yangtze River in subtropical humid region. Daily meteorological element data and RD deaths in Wuhu City were collected from 2014 to 2020. Time series analysis was conducted using distributed lagged nonlinear model (DLNM) combined with generalized additive model (GAM), and stratified by age and gender. In 7 years, a total of 8016 RD death cases were collected in Wuhu, China. The results demonstrated that the maximum impacts of short-term exposure to exceedingly low temperatures mean (Tmean) were at lag 9, with the maximum relative risk (RR) of 1.044 (lag 1, 95% CI: 1.001, 1.098). The risk of exceedingly high Tmean reached its maximum at lag 0 (RR = 1.070, 95% CI: 1.018, 1.125). Low relative humidity (RH) was negatively associated with the risk of RD death, with the lowest RR values occurring at lag 12 (RR = 0.987, 95% CI: 0.975, 0.999). No significant correlation was found for diurnal temperature range (DTR). Stratified analysis showed that Tmean exposure remained statistically significant for male, female and elderly, while RH and DTR only seemed to increase the mortality risk in the young. In a word, short-term exposure to extreme temperatures may increase the RD mortality risk in the population, and young people needed to be aware that exposure to exceedingly high RH and DTR also increased the risk.
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Funding
This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81273169, 81573218, 81773514, 82073655), the funds for academic and technical leaders in Anhui province (2017D140) and the funds for Scientific Research of Anhui Medical University (2020xkjT006).
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LY: conceptualization, methodology, software, writing—original draft, visualization, writing—review and editing. JZ: conceptualization, writing—review and editing, methodology, validation. MS: software, writing—original draft, visualization, data curation. JW: investigation, data curation, validation, conceptualization. YM: software, data curation, investigation. KH: investigation, visualization, software. HL: software, visualization. JZ: resources, supervision. XF: writing—review and editing, project administration. FP: resources, writing—review and editing, supervision, project administration, funding acquisition.
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Yu, L., Zhu, J., Shao, M. et al. Relationship between meteorological factors and mortality from respiratory diseases in a subtropical humid region along the Yangtze River in China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 78483–78498 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21268-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-21268-w