Construction of the environmental meteorological comprehensive health index under the atmospheric comprehensive health risk in Beijing, China

Abstract

The comprehensive effects of air pollutants and non-optimal temperature on health have received much attention. In this study, piecewise regressions and the Generalized Additive Models (GAM) were utilized to investigate the relationship between air pollutants, temperature, and non-accidental deaths in Beijing during 2013–2016. Two air quality health indices (AQHI and AQHI_2), two environmental meteorological health indices (EMHI and EMHI_2), and Temperature Health Index (THI) were constructed based on exposure response correlation coefficients. Higher correlations between EMHI, EMHI_2 and non-accidental deaths were reported than those observed for AQHI and AQHI_2 indices. After smoothing long-term trend and days of week effect, AQHI, AQHI_2, EMHI, EMHI_2 and THI all showed significant correlation with non-accidental deaths. The distributed lag model illustrated that EMHI showed significant overall health effects on lag 0–21 days, while AQHI did not. The relative risk of EMHI peaked with lag 0 and reached 1.08 when EMHI was 10. It was proposed that different EMHI thresholds should be optimized for the early warning risks of heat and cold exposures. This study showed that the comprehensive environmental meteorological health indices could be used as supplements to air quality health index to communicate the overall health risks of atmospheric environment to the public.