BACKGROUND Ambient (outdoor) air pollution has been implicated as a major cause of acute cardiovascular and pulmonary illnesses and increased risk for acute and chronic effects after chronic exposures, including mortality and morbidity. In 2008, due to persistent health concerns about its workforce and their dependents, the US Mission in China began monitoring air quality at the US Embassy in B...

Air pollution has been shown to increase frequency of asthma attacks, as usually measured by hospitalisation rates. We hypothesise that purchase of asthma reliever medications will reflect a broader association between the environmental exposure and asthma exacerbations. In a time series analysis, we estimated the association of dust storms with mild asthma manifestations, as indicated by medic...

The shape of the dose-response relation between particulate matter air pollution and mortality is crucial for public health assessment, and departures of this relation from linearity could have important regulatory consequences. A number of investigators have studied the shape of the particulate matter-mortality dose-response relation and concluded that the relation could be adequately describe...

Time series models relating short-term changes in air pollution levels to daily mortality counts typically assume that the effects of air pollution on the log relative rate of mortality do not vary with time. However, these short-term effects might plausibly vary by season. Changes in the sources of air pollution and meteorology can result in changes in characteristics of the air pollution mixt...

Exposure to air pollution during pregnancy has been suggested to be a risk factor for preterm birth; however, epidemiologic evidence remains mixed and limited. The authors examined the association between ambient levels of particulate matter <2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter (PM(2.5)) and the risk of preterm birth in North Carolina during the period 2001-2005. They estimated the risks of cumulati...

Air pollution consists of both gaseous and particulate-matter pollutants. The former include nitrogen dioxide (NO2), ozone (O3), and sulphur dioxide (SO2). The latter consist of particulate matter of varying aerodynamic diameter, as defined by cutoff points—for example, particles with diameters of ,10 mm (PM10) or ,2.5 mm (PM2.5). Because of their small size, these particles can be inhaled deep...

Exposure to urban air pollution, ultrafine particles or gases, is associated with acute cardiovascular mortality and morbidity. We investigated the effect of ambient air pollution on endothelial function in 40 healthy white male nonsmokers spontaneously breathing ambient air in Paris, France. Air pollutant levels (nitrogen, sulfur and carbon oxides, and particulate matter) were averaged during ...

Although epidemiological studies have linked particulate air pollution with cardiopulmonary mortality, underlying biological mechanisms remain largely unknown. Unexplored pathophysiological pathways include transient declines in blood oxygenation and/or changes in cardiac rhythm following particulate exposure. In this study, blood oxygen saturation using pulse oximetry (SpO2) and pulse rate wer...

Short-term effects of air pollution (consisting primarily of sulphur dioxide and particulate matter but with low acidity) on respiratory morbidity were studied in asthmatic children from Sokolov, Czech Republic. Eighty nine children with asthma, who recorded daily peak expiratory flow measurements, symptoms and medication use in a diary, were analysed for 7 months during the winter of 1991-1992...

Air pollution caused by atmospheric particulate and gaseous pollutants has drawn broad public concern globally. In this paper, the spatial-temporal distributions of major air pollutants in Shenzhen from March 2013 to February 2014 are discussed. In this study, ground-site monitoring data from 19 monitoring sites was used and spatial interpolation and spatial autocorrelation methods were applied...