Ambient air pollution and emergency department visits for asthma in Erie County, New York 2007–2012

Purpose: 8% of the US population has asthma. Air pollution is linked to exacerbation in susceptible individuals. The objective was to identify air pollutants that increased the risk of asthma emergency department visits during a time wherein a polluting factory was criminally convicted, changing local air pollutant levels. Methods: An ecological time-series design used a daily count of asthma emergency visits from 2007 to 2012 as the dependent variable. Independent variables air pollutants (NO₂, PM_2.5 CO, and O₃), controlling for meteorological conditions, were analyzed using time-series and Poisson GLM models. Results: 76,651 emergency asthma visits were included with an average of 35 visits per day (SD = 9.2, range 11–80) in a stationary time series. Increased visit volume in fall and spring had no associations to the air pollutants. Associations between individual air pollutants occurred in otherwise low-volume months for asthma emergency visits. The strongest relationship was an 11.6% increase in the asthma emergency visit rate during the month of June. In monthly groupings that removed most of the autumn and spring months, O₃, PM_2.5, CO, and NO₂ were associated with 5, 4, 2, and 2% increases in asthma emergency visits, respectively. CO was the only pollutant with a negative association with asthma emergency visits, occurring in the month of April. Conclusions: Pollutants NO₂, PM_2.5 CO, and O₃ were associated with increased emergency asthma visits in some, but not all months of the year. Air pollution’s impact on asthma emergencies may be masked by other, more influential seasonal triggers, such as infections or allergies.