AIR POLLUTION AND DAILY HUMAN MORTALITY IN A TEMPERATE CLIMATE CITY OF AUSTRALIA

Abstract

ISEE-320 Introduction: Many studies have provided evidence on impact of air pollution on human health outcome. Aim: The project was to explore the association between air pollution and daily death numbers in Adelaide, a temperate city with a 1.1 million population, in Australia. Methods: Daily disease data (ICD-10) in Adelaide over 1986–1999, with overall deaths and deaths in different age and disease groups, were retrieved from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Daily climatic variables were obtained from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Daily air pollution data, including SO2 over 1992–1999, NOx over 1986–1996, CO over 1988–1999, O3 over 1986–1996, PM10 and TSP over 1986–1994, were provided by the SA Environment Protection Authority. Poisson regression analysis (GAM procedure), performed by the SAS, was used in the analyses. Results: Both correlation and regression analyses showed that SO2,NOxand CO are positively associated with total daily death numbers, indicating that the death numbers increased with a rise in these three air pollution indicators. There is no significant relationship between TSP, PM10and daily death numbers. Surprisingly, O3was negatively related to the death numbers in some groups. Conclusion: Total death numbers increased with air pollution. However, some results were not consistent with other similar studies. This could be due to the very limited data (only about 400 days of TSP and PM10 data were available in Adelaide) and/or the lower values of TSP and PM10 and O3 in Adelaide. These results should be clarified in further studies.