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Effects of extreme temperatures on hospital emergency room visits for respiratory diseases in Beijing, China

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Abstract

Extreme temperature is closely associated with human health, but limited evidence is available for the effects of extreme temperatures on respiratory diseases in China. The goal of this study is to evaluate the effects of extreme temperatures on hospital emergency room (ER) visits for respiratory diseases in Beijing, China. We used a distributed lag non-linear model (DLNM) coupled with a generalized additive model (GAM) to estimate the association between extreme temperatures and hospital ER visits for different age and gender subgroups in Beijing from 2009 to 2012. The results showed that the exposure-response curve between temperature and hospital ER visits was almost W-shaped, with increasing relative risks (RRs) at extremely low temperature. In the whole year period, strong acute hot effects were observed, especially for the elders (age > 65 years). The highest RR associated with the extremely high temperature was 1.36 (95% CI, 0.96–1.92) at lag 0–27. The longer-lasting cold effects were found the strongest at lag 0–27 for children (age ≤ 15 years) and the relative risk was 1.96 (95% CI, 1.70–2.26). We also found that females were more susceptible to extreme temperatures than males.

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Funding

This work is supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities Grant No. lzujbky-2017-69, National Natural Science Foundation of China Grant No. 41475095, No. 91737101, and No. 41561037. Part of the work is funded by a Scholarship awarded to Yuxia Ma (File No.201308625022) supported by the China Scholarship Council (CSC).

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  1. Yuxia Ma and Jianding Zhou contributed equally to this work as co-first authors.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Atmospheric Sciences, Key Laboratory of Semi-Arid Climate Change, Ministry of Education, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Yuxia Ma, Jianding Zhou, Sixu Yang & Zhiang Yu

  2. Tacheng Meteorology Bureau, Xinjiang, 834700, China

    Fei Wang

  3. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Meteorology and Health, Shanghai, 200030, China

    Ji Zhou

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  1. Yuxia Ma
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Ma, Y., Zhou, J., Yang, S. et al. Effects of extreme temperatures on hospital emergency room visits for respiratory diseases in Beijing, China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 26, 3055–3064 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3855-4

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