Impact of air pollution on physician office visits for common childhood conditions in Ontario, Canada

Abstract

Methods PM2.5 and temperature measurements were obtained from satellite data for all of Ontario [2]. Physician office visits were stratified into two groups based on the literature: air pollution-sensitive (acute respiratory infections, allergic rhinitis, asthma, bronchiolitis, diabetes, otitis media) and air pollution-insensitive (gastroenteritis, injuries). Claims data were obtained for every month in 2010 from health administrative databases for children 0-14 years of age. Ageand sex-standardized morbidity ratios (SMRs) were calculated by region in Ontario. Spatial Poisson regression models were used to analyze the relationship between PM2.5 and physician office visits, with temperature as a covariate. Results Crude rates of physician office visits are presented in Table 1. As expected, fine particulate was significantly associated with monthly rates of physician office visits for air pollution-sensitive conditions, and not for insensitive conditions. Fitted SMRs for air pollution-sensitive conditions are presented in Figure 1. SMRs for sensitive and insensitive conditions were strongly positively correlated (r = 0.53), and data were spatially autocorrelated. This suggests an underlying spatial process that influences physician office visit rates for common childhood conditions, both for air pollution-sensitive and -insensitive conditions.