The effect of short-term changes in air pollution on respiratory and cardiovascular morbidity in Nicosia, Cyprus.

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of daily changes in levels of PM10 on the daily volume of respiratory and cardiovascular admissions in Nicosia, Cyprus during 1995-2004. After controlling for long- (year and month) and short-term (day of the week) patterns as well as the effect of weather in Generalized Additive Poisson models, some positive associations were observed with all-cause and cause-specific admissions. Risk of hospitalization increased stepwise across quartiles of days with increasing levels of PM10 by 1.3% (-0.3, 2.8), 4.9% (3.3, 6.6), 5.6% (3.9, 7.3) as compared to days with the lowest concentrations. For every 10μg/m3 increase in daily average PM10 concentration, there was a 1.2% (-0.1%, 2.4%) increase in cardiovascular admissions. With respects to respiratory admissions, an effect was observed only in the warm season with a 1.8% (-0.22, 3.85) increase in admissions per 10μg/m3 increase in PM10. The effect on respiratory admissions seemed to be much stronger in women and, surprisingly, restricted to people of adult age.