Influence of Meteorological Parameters and Air Pollutants onto the Morbidity due to Respiratory Diseases in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain

Abstract

This study considers the relationship between the risk of hospital admission due to respiratory diseases, the daily weather, and the air pollution conditions between 2000 and 2006. A synoptic climatological approach is used to investigate the links between weather types and all hospital admissions due to respiratory diseases in Castilla-La Mancha (CLM), Spain. The main circulation weather types (CWTs) were determined for winter and spring, the seasons with the highest percentage of hospital admissions, and the frequency distribution of these types was also analyzed. The study includes a summary of the main characteristics of the hospital admission series and their distribution over the study period of seven years, as well as the frequency distributions of the admissions classified by gender and age, for each season, month and day of the week. In addition, an admission index was used to compare CWTs and hospital admissions due to respiratory diseases. The results show distinctly different responses of daily respiratory disease admission rates (RD) to the eight CWTs identified in winter and in spring. In winter, three CWTs (southwesterly (SW), anticyclonic (A) and hybrid anticyclonic southwesterly (HASW)) present values 1.5 times above the average admission rates. In contrast, there are no significant differences in spring. Finally, the results of Principal Component Analysis applied to the daily series of meteorological parameters, atmospheric pollutants and morbidity data revealed that in winter the decrease in RD is related to increases in temperature and pressure. These results represent an important step in identifying reliable connections between weather-air pollutants and human health.

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