Association between long-term exposure to air pollutants and cardiopulmonary mortality rates in South Korea

Abstract

Background The association between long-term exposure to air pollutants, including nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide (SO2), ozone (O3), and particulate matter 10 μm or less in diameter (PM10), and mortality by ischemic heart disease (IHD), cerebrovascular disease (CVD), pneumonia (PN), and chronic lower respiratory disease (CLRD) is unclear. We investigated whether living in an administrative district with heavy air pollution is associated with an increased risk of mortality by the diseases through an ecological study using South Korean administrative data over 19 years. Methods A total of 249 Si-Gun-Gus, unit of administrative districts in South Korea were studied. In each district, the daily concentrations of CO, SO2, NO2, O3, and PM10 were averaged over 19 years (2001–2018). Age-adjusted mortality rates by IHD, CVD, PN and CLRD for each district were averaged for the same study period. Multivariate beta-regression analysis was performed to estimate the associations between air pollutant concentrations and mortality rates, after adjusting for confounding factors including altitude, population density, higher education rate, smoking rate, obesity rate, and gross regional domestic product per capita. Associations were also estimated for two subgrouping schema: Capital and non-Capital areas (77:172 districts) and urban and rural areas (168:81 districts). Results For IHD, higher SO2 concentrations were significantly associated with a higher mortality rate, whereas other air pollutants had null associations. For CVD, SO2 and PM10 concentrations were significantly associated with a higher mortality rate. For PN, O3 concentrations had significant positive associations with a higher mortality rate, while SO2, NO2, and PM10 concentrations had significant negative associations. For CLRD, O3 concentrations were associated with an increased mortality rate, while CO, NO2, and PM10 concentrations had negative associations. In the subgroup analysis, positive associations between SO2 concentrations and IHD mortality were consistently observed in all subgroups, while other pollutant-disease pairs showed null, or mixed associations. Conclusion Long-term exposure to high SO2 concentration was significantly and consistently associated with a high mortality rate nationwide and in Capital and non-Capital areas, and in urban and rural areas. Associations between other air pollutants and disease-related mortalities need to be investigated in further studies.

Seasonal and Spatial Variations of Atmospheric Ammonia in the Urban and Suburban Environments of Seoul, Korea

“…An increase in ammonia concentration contributes to PM 2.5 formation in the atmosphere [20], and the contribution of ammonia to atmospheric aerosols affects human health, which can lead to increase in the likelihood of hospitalization. Air pollution affects the respiratory and cardiovascular systems of the body and is one of the causes of high mortality in South Korea [21]. The presence of ammonium sulfate and ammonium nitrate in aerosols significantly impacts climatic conditions [22] as these aerosols absorb solar radiation, further heating the atmosphere and contributing to climate change [23].…”

Air Pollution and Cardiac Arrhythmias: From Epidemiological and Clinical Evidences to Cellular Electrophysiological Mechanisms

“…The cardiovascular influences were also observed after long-term SO 2 exposure. An investigation conducted in South Korea suggested that longterm exposure to a high level of SO 2 was consistently and significantly associated with an increased ischemic heart disease mortality (153).…”

Contribution of Bayesian Networks to Environmental Health Issues, Application to Etang de Berre

“…The pathologies recognized in literature as being connected with this type of pollution [9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21] , are pathologies corresponding to the following ICD-10 3 codes: . I00 to I199 all diseases of the circulatory system in which are found for example ischemic heart diseases, coronary diseases, .…”

“…CB169, TEQ-2005, CB187, 2,3,4,7,8 PeCDF, As, 2,3,7,8 TeCDF, crustaceans, VDL, CB149, CB114, CB157, CB20, CB28, Co, CB194, Abundance, PCB indicators18 Without nonetheless exceeding the threshold of a 0.20 probability, except for example when a pollutant is known for having an impact (of the PCB type or others with a value of 0.18)…”