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KMID : 1156220060320040304
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Journal of Environmental Health Sciences
2006 Volume.32 No. 4 p.304 ~ p.315
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A Meta-Analysis of Air Pollution in Relation to Daily Mortality in Seven Major Cities of Korea, 1998-2001
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Cho Yong-Sung
Son Ji-young
Lee Jong-Tae
Kim Yoon-Shin
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Abstract
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This study is performed to reexamine the association between ambient air pollution and daily mortality in seven major cities of Korea using a method of meta-analysis with the data filed for the period 1998-2001. These cities account for half of the Korean population (about 23 million). The observed concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO, mean = 1.08 ppm), ozone (O₃, mean = 33.97 ppb), particulate matter less than 10 ㎛ (PM10, mean = 57.11 ㎍/㎥), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂, mean = 25.09 ppb), and sulfur dioxide (SO₂, mean = 9.14 ppb) during the study period were at levels below Korea’s current ambient air quality standards. Generalized additive models were applied to allow for the highly flexible fitting of seasonal and long-term time trends in air pollution as well as nonlinear associations with weather variables, such as air temperature and relative humidity. Also, we calculated a weighted mean as a meta-analysis summary of the estimates and its standard error. In city-specific analyses, an increase of 41.17 ㎍/㎥ (IQR) of PM10 corresponded to 1~12% more deaths, given constant weather conditions. Like most of air pollution epidemiologic studies, this meta-analysis cannot avoid fleeing from measurement misclassification since no personal measurement was taken. However, we can expect that a measurement bias be reduced in district-specific estimate since a monitoring station is better representative of air quality of the matched district. Significant heterogeneity was found for the effect of all pollutants. The estimated relative risks from meta-like analysis increased compared to those relative risks from pooled analysis. The similar results to those from the previous studies indicated existence of health effect of air pollution at current levels in many industrialized countries, including Korea.
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KEYWORD
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air pollution, daily death counts, time-series analysis, generalized additive model
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