P078Effect of air pollution on the number of patients admitted to emergency room due to asthma attack

IntroductionWHO reported that seven million people died of diseases by air pollution in 2012. Especially, among the various health effects of air pollution, prevalence and mortality of asthma are increasing rapidly. Thus, asthma has been regarded as the most important disease for risk assessment of air pollution. Authors investigated relationship between the number of patients admitted to emergency room by asthma attack and air pollution.MethodsThe study was performed during Jan 1st 2007 - Dec 31st 2010 in Ansan-city and Jeju-island. The subjects were residents in those 2 areas (by national health insurance data) aged between 20-69. Operational definition of asthma attack was J450, J459 (ICD-10) in the claims data either major or minor diseases during the research period admitted through the emergency room. Air pollution data (PM10, O3, NO2, SO2) was from the Korea Environment Agency. The lag-effects (0-5 day) were applied to estimate the RR and 95% CI: of daily number of patients associated with increasing quartile range of pollutants.ResultsFirst, the number of patients admitted to emergency room by asthma attack during the study period was 701 (Ansan-si) and 634 (Jeju). Second, mean concentrations of pollutants except O3 in Ansan-si were higher than those in Jeju. Third, in addition to the effects of single pollutant, mixed effects had significant associations on the patients admission to the emergency room in both areas, and the number of patients increased by 1.1 % -23.1% in Jeju and 5.2 % -14.2% in Ansan-si.ConclusionAs a result, the authors identified the mixed effects of the air pollutants are greater than the single ones. To manage the health effects of air pollutants, the environmental policy, as well as the control of individual air pollutants, the management of mixed effects should be focused on, such as enforcement of total emission regulation for air pollutants.