Health Risk of Air Pollution Exposure to the Elderly in China

Abstract

PP-29-013 Background/Aims: Declining birth and mortality rates bring more aging population in many countries sooner or later. More than 8.3% of the 1.3-billion Chinese are above 65. About two-thirds of the elderly is not in good health condition. Death in the elderly accounted for 86.71% of the total death population. Prevalence of chronic diseases of the elderly is 3.2 times that of all people. According to the research, air pollution is a big issue and a certain contributing factor to the health of the elderly. Methods: Outdoor, indoor, and personal particulate matter (PM10) samples of a panel-study (80 old people aged 65–75) were collected on prebaked Teflon and quartz filters in summer and winter 2009 during the Program of Prestudy of Air Quality Criteria for PM at the Tianjin site in China. The mass concentrations were measured under specific temperature and humidity. Organic carbon (OC) and elemental carbon (EC) were analyzed by the thermal optical reflectance method following the IMPROVE protocol. Due to people spending different time in microenvironments, personal exposure was more complicated than expected. So, relationship analysis among outdoor, indoor, and personal PM10 and carbonaceous species were made in order to explain the true level of total exposure. Results: Results come out those concentrations of personal PM10 varied between arrange of 50.30–376.52 μg/m3. A long-term average concentrations of outdoor, indoor, and personal PM10 were 155.27 ± 61.70 μg/m3, 113.11 ± 47.78 μg/m3, and 174.86 ± 83.37 μg/m3 in summer, 178.78 ± 81.60 μg/m3, 173.68 ± 39.96 μg/m3, and 192.37 ± 128.27 μg/m3 in winter, respectively. OC made up the majority of TC and accounted for 12%–30% of mass concentration of PM10. The average OC concentrations of outdoor, indoor, and personal exposure are 18.62 ± 6.46 μg/m3, 24.09 ± 9.03 μg/m3, and 33.83 ± 8.59 μg/m3 in summer, 46.02 ± 25.06 μg/m3, 46.43 ± 17.54 μg/m3, and 64.16 ± 25.06 μg/m3 in winter, respectively. The average OC/EC ratio of outdoor, indoor, and personal exposure are 3.90, 4.65, and 7.03 in summer, 3.25, 4.51 and 5.58 in winter, respectively. Conclusion: Obviously, PM10 pollution in winter was more serious because of heating and insufficient ventilation. It also showed that personal PM10 exposure level was higher than others, suggesting the existence of exposure error in the environmental epidemiological study. Indoor source was the dominant contributor to the OC, and the ratio of OC/EC exceeding 2 also suggested the presence of secondary organic carbon.