Abstract
Objective: Air pollutants are linked to asthma exacerbation. The study purpose was to demonstrate an association between air pollutants levels and asthma emergency room (ER) visit trends in a highly populated US urban county in Georgia during 2018-2019.
Methods: Time series analyses were conducted for the variations in daily numbers of children and adult asthma emergency room visits and changes in daily mean PM 2.5 , daily mean PM 10 concentrations, daily max 1-hour SO 2 concentrations, daily max 1-hour NO 2 concentrations, daily max 8-hour ozone concentrations, and airborne pollen loads for 2018 to 2019 and potential trends were estimated by using the autoregressive integrated moving average or ARIMA model.
Results: During 2018-2019, 15,418 asthma-related ER visits occurred. The pollutants NO 2, PM 2.5 , PM 10 , and pollen were strong predictors of children's asthma ER visits between 2018 and 2019. No significant associations were observed between the levels of SO 2 , ozone, and children's asthma emergency ER visits.
Conclusions: The findings from this time series study strongly suggest that there is a significant contributing relationship between certain air pollutants (NO 2, PM 2.5 , PM 10 , and pollen) and asthma ER visits in children.
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Journal | Journal of the Georgia Public Health Association |
| Volume | 8 |
| State | Published - Jun 1 2022 |
Keywords
- Air pollutants
- asthma
- ambient air quality
- emergency room visit
- Fulton County
- Georgia
DC Disciplines
- Biostatistics
- Epidemiology
