Abstract
Previous studies have shown an association between mortality and ambient air pollution in South Korea. However, these studies may have been subject to bias, as they lacked adjustment for spatio-temporal structures. This paper addresses this research gap by examining the association between air pollution and cause-specific mortality in South Korea between 2012 and 2015 using a two-stage Bayesian spatio-temporal model. We used 2012–2014 mortality and air pollution data for parameter estimation (i.e., model fitting) and 2015 data for model validation. Our results suggest that the relative risks of total, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality were 1.028, 1.047, and 1.045, respectively, with every 10-µg/m3 increase in monthly PM2.5 (fine particulate matter) exposure. These findings warrant protection of populations who experience elevated ambient air pollution exposure to mitigate mortality burden in South Korea.
Highlights
IntroductionAir pollution has been viewed as a threat to human health since the onset of rapid industrialization
Air pollution has been viewed as a threat to human health since the onset of rapid industrialization.It is widely known that air pollutants, including particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm (PM10 ) or 2.5 μm (PM2.5 ; fine particulate matter), is linked to total, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality [1]
There are very few existing studies addressing the relationship between PM2.5 and death in South Korea, the effects of PM2.5 on mortality can be inferred from previous studies on PM10 and human health
Summary
Air pollution has been viewed as a threat to human health since the onset of rapid industrialization. There is frequently a misalignment problem, due to the different dataset sources This is because air pollution monitoring data are collected at monitoring stations, while health data are collected at an aggregated areal level. Most of the epidemiologic studies of air pollution conducted in South Korea have focused on how temporally varying air pollutant concentrations affected mortality in individual cities [18,19], but such studies should be conducted over entire areas of Korea to establish national-level air pollution control policy for health improvement. A two-stage Bayesian spatio-temporal hierarchical model was employed to better estimate the effects of air pollution on mortality outcomes, as well as to better predict the mortality associated with ambient air pollution
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