Land use regression modeling of oxidative potential of fine particles, NO2, PM2.5 mass and association to type two diabetes mellitus

Abstract

While land use regression models (LUR) are commonly used, e.g. for the prediction of spatially variable air pollutant mass concentrations, they are scarcely used for predicting the oxidative potential (OP), a suggested unifying predictor of health effects. Therefore a LUR model was developed to examine if long-term OP of fine particulate exposure can be reasonably predicted by LUR modeling and whether it is related to health effects in a study region comprised of urban and rural areas. Four 14-day sampling periods over 1 year at 40 sites in the western Ruhr Area and adjacent northern rural area, Germany, in 2002/2003 were conducted and annual Nitrogen Dioxide (NO2), fine particles (PM2.5), and OP were calculated. LUR models were developed to estimate spatially-resolved annual OP, NO2 and PM2.5 concentrations. The model performance was checked by leave-one-out cross validation (LOOCV) and cox regression was used to analyze the association of modeled residential OP and NO2 with incident type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) in 1784 elderly women during a mean follow-up of 16 years (baseline 1985–1994). The measured OP and NO2 concentrations were moderately correlated (rSpearman 0.57). The LUR models explained 62% and 92% of the OP and NO2 variance (adjusted LOOCV R2 57% and 90%). PM10 emission from combustion in a 5000 m buffer was the most important predictor for OP and NO2. Modeled pollutants were highly correlated (rSpearman 0.87). Model quality for OP was sensitive to the inclusion of a single influential measurement site. For PM2.5 mass only an insufficient model with a low explained variance of 22% (adjusted R2) was developed so no health effects analyses were conducted with estimated PM2.5.Increases in OP and NO2 were associated with an increase in risk of T2DM by a hazard ratio of 1.38 (95% CI 1.06–1.80) and 1.39 (95% CI 1.07–1.81) per interquartile range of OP and NO2, respectively. We conclude that spatially-resolved OP can be predicted by LUR modeling, but future work is needed to investigate the possibility to increase OP model quality with refined predictors.