Abstract
Air pollution is a major environmental problem in the Kathmandu Valley. Specifically, roadside and traffic-related air pollution exposure levels were found at very high levels exceeding Nepal air quality standards for daily PM2.5. In an exposure study involving traffic police officers, we collected 78 blood samples in a highly polluted spring season (16 February 2014–4 April 2014) and 63 blood samples in the less polluted summer season (20 July 2014–22 August 2014). Fourteen biomarkers, i.e., C-reactive protein (CRP), serum amyloid A (SAA), intracellular adhesion molecule (ICAM-1), vascular cell adhesion molecule (VCAM-1), interferon gamma (IFN-γ), interleukins (IL1-β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-8, IL-10, IL-12, IL-13), and tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α) were analyzed in collected blood samples using proinflammatory panel 1 kits and vascular injury panel 2 kits. All the inflammatory biomarker levels were higher in the summer season than in the spring season, while particulate levels were higher in the spring season than in the summer season. We did not find significant association between 24-hour average PM2.5 or black carbon (BC) exposure levels with most of analyzed biomarkers for the traffic volunteers working and residing near busy roads in Kathmandu, Nepal, during 2014. Inflammation and vascular injury marker concentrations were generally higher in females, suggesting the important role of gender in inflammation biomarkers. Because of the small sample size of female subjects, further investigation with a larger sample size is required to confirm the role of gender in inflammation biomarkers.
Highlights
Air pollution is an important environmental health challenge across the world
While the mean PM2.5 concentration was larger by a factor of 2.7 during spring compared to that in summer, the mean black carbon (BC) concentration was larger by a factor of 1.1 during spring compared to that in summer
Because traffic activities were not expected to be different during two seasons, the insignificant difference in BC concentrations suggested the importance of traffic-related particulate matter (PM) sources in both seasons
Summary
Many studies have reported adverse health effects associated with roadside traffic exposures [1,2,3]. Studies have identified a large number of illnesses that are associated with air pollution exposure [10]. A group of peptides and proteins, are related to inflammatory response to particulate exposure [14]. Several inflammatory biomarkers have been found to be associated with particulate matter (PM) exposure [15,16,17].
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