Assessment of Respiratory morbidity burden from exposure to vegetation fire-PM2.5 in Upper Northern Thailand for the year 2018

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIM: The seasonal occurrence of vegetation fire in the Mainland Southeast Asia (MSEA) has deteriorated air quality, which can increase respiratory diseases. Nevertheless, no study has assessed the health burden from exposure to vegetation-fire smoke in the MSEA. We aimed to estimate the number of hospital visits from respiratory diseases attributable to vegetation-fire PM2.5 in the Upper northern Thailand (UNT). METHODS: The modelled vegetation fire-PM2.5 were obtained from System for Integrated modeLling of Atmosheric coMposition (SILAM) model, which is a global-to-meso-scale air pollution dispersion model. Vegetation fire-PM2.5 were simulated based on fire radiative power data of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite data. We averaged the extracted grid-cell of fire-PM2.5 within district boundaries. The number of respiratory disease-related hospital visits attributable to fire-PM2.5 was estimated for the whole year and burning period (January to April) of the year 2018 by using the modelled daily fire-PM2.5, population data, and concentration-response function derived from the previous epidemiological study. RESULTS:In 2018, we estimated 17,817 hospital visits for respiratory diseases attributable to vegetation fire-PM2.5 in the UNT. Our estimation was accounted approximately 1% of the total hospital visits for respiratory diseases throughout the year and 3 % during the burning season. CONCLUSIONS:This study suggests that PM2.5 emitted from vegetation fire events poses a health burden across the UNT. KEYWORDS: Health burden estimation, Vegetation fires, Hospital visits, Respiratory diseases