Abstract
One of the key climate change factors, temperature, has potentially grave implications for human health. We report the first attempt to investigate the association between the daily 3-hour maximum apparent temperature (Tappmax) and respiratory (RD), cardiovascular (CVD), and cerebrovascular (CBD) emergency hospital admissions in Copenhagen, controlling for air pollution. The study period covered 1 January 2002−31 December 2006, stratified in warm and cold periods. A case-crossover design was applied. Susceptibility (effect modification) by age, sex, and socio-economic status was investigated. For an IQR (8°C) increase in the 5-day cumulative average of Tappmax, a 7% (95% CI: 1%, 13%) increase in the RD admission rate was observed in the warm period whereas an inverse association was found with CVD (−8%, 95% CI: −13%, −4%), and none with CBD. There was no association between the 5-day cumulative average of Tappmax during the cold period and any of the cause-specific admissions, except in some susceptible groups: a negative association for RD in the oldest age group and a positive association for CVD in men and the second highest SES group. In conclusion, an increase in Tappmax is associated with a slight increase in RD and decrease in CVD admissions during the warmer months.
Highlights
The influence of weather changes on human health is well known since the era of Hippocrates (430 BC) [1]
The robustness of the observed associations was confirmed in models with an alternative temperature definition: the same lag structure and similar effect estimates were observed (Figures S8 and S9, Tables S4, S5, S6, S7, S8, Text S4). This is the first attempt to evaluate the association between temperature and RD, CVD and CBD emergency hospital admissions in Greater Copenhagen, and this included possible interaction with air pollution and effect modification by sex, age and SES
We observed a modest increase of 0.8% per 1uC in total RD emergency admissions with rising Tappmax in the warm period
Summary
The influence of weather changes on human health is well known since the era of Hippocrates (430 BC) [1]. Rising temperature is one of the key climatic change factors with direct effects on health. Clarifying the relationship between key climate change factors and specific health outcomes can assist in identifying vulnerable populations and aid policy makers in formulating preventive actions. Few studies investigated the relationship between non-heat wave temperature and cause-specific mortality [2,3], morbidity [8,9,10,11,12], or were conducted in Scandinavia [13,14,15,16]. In a colder climate the increase of global temperature may benefit health [4], the wintertime increase in total non-accidental mortality may be due to infectious disease and not direct effect of cold weather [17].
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