Ambient air quality and spatio-temporal patterns of cardiovascular emergency department visits

Background: Air pollutants have been associated with various adverse health effects, including increased rates of hospital admissions and emergency room visits. Although numerous time-series studies and case-crossover studies have estimated associations between day-to-day variation in pollutant levels and mortality/morbidity records, studies on geographic variations in emergency department use and the spatial effects in their associations with air pollution exposure are rare. Methods: We focused on the elderly who visited emergency room for cardiovascular related disease (CVD) in 2011. Using spatially and temporally resolved multi-pollutant exposures, we investigated the effect of short-term exposures to ambient air pollution on emergency department utilization. We developed two statistical models with and without spatial random effects within a hierarchical Bayesian framework to capture the spatial heterogeneity and spatial autocorrelation remaining in emergency department utilization. Results: Although the cardiovascular effect of spatially homogeneous pollutants, such as PM2.5 and ozone, was unchanged, we found the cardiovascular effect of NO $$_2$$ 2 was pronounced after accounting for the spatially correlated structure in emergency department utilization. We also identified areas with high ED utilization for CVD among the elderly and assessed the uncertainty associated with risk estimates. Conclusions: We assessed the short-term effect of multi-pollutants on cardiovascular risk of the elderly and demonstrated the use of community multiscale air quality model-derived spatially and temporally resolved multi-pollutant exposures to an epidemiological study. Our results indicate that NO $$_2$$ 2 was significantly associated with the elevated ED utilization for CVD among the elderly.