Abstract
Environmental factors such as air pollution are known to exacerbate respiratory illness and increase the overall health risk. However, on a daily or seasonal basis, the relation between air pollutants, weather and a disease such as asthma is not clear. When combined with aeroallergens such as birch pollen and under specific weather conditions, synergistic effects may increase symptoms of respiratory illness and morbidity and then reveal interesting links with environmental factors. Hence, it is important to improve the understanding of pollution-pollen-weather and broaden the public health message. Combined analysis and model simulation of aeroallergens, air pollution and weather as presented here is important to correctly evaluate health burdens and allow a better forecast of the potential health risk. However, analyzing the combined effects of several environmental factors is not well understood and represents a challenging task. This paper shows: (1) the results of data analysis performed in Montreal for asthma hospitalization in relation to complex synergistic environmental factors, and (2) model simulation of birch pollen using a coupled weather-air quality model (GEM-MACH) compared with model-data fusion of classical chemical species (e.g., near-surface ozone, nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter) in order to evaluate spatiotemporal vulnerable zone for asthma health risk.
Highlights
IntroductionCanadians and is the most common chronic respiratory disease in Canada [1,2]
Establishing seasonal and hourly patterns of pollen presence as well as asthma occurrence is a first step towards developing predictive capabilities of aeroallergens and related asthma/rhinitis
Seasonal Variations and Statistical Relationships between Daily Asthma Counts and Seasonal variation of asthma daily hospitalization is important to examine if we want to relate it to aeroallergens or other environmental factors which are themselves strongly dependent on the seasons
Summary
Canadians and is the most common chronic respiratory disease in Canada [1,2]. 12% and 25% of Canadian children have received a diagnosis of asthma ([2,3] and references therein) and associated costs to the healthcare system reach more than $2 billion each year [4]. Despite the fact that medical services and treatment have improved over the years, the prevalence of respiratory diseases such as asthma has increased worldwide over the past few decades [5,6,7,8,9,10] as well as in Canada [2]. Some countries are showing a decline of the prevalence of pediatric asthma
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
