Effects of air pollution on clinic visits of different gender and age respiratory outpatients in Shanghai, China

Objective To investigate the relationship between ambient air pollution and the number of clinic visits of respiratory outpatients of different gender and age in Shanghai.Methods Poisson distribution in generalized liner models(GLM) was used to describe the relationship between the contents of air pollutants including particulate matter ≤2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter(PM_2.5), sulfur dioxide(SO₂), and nitrogen dioxide(NO₂) and the number of clinic visits of respiratory outpatients of different gender and age after adjusting for long-term trend, holiday effect, week effect, flu epidemic and weather condition during the period from January 1st, 2008 through 2012.Results We found that air pollutants such as PM_2.5, SO₂, and NO₂ were the risk factors for the incidence of respiratory disease;females were more susceptible to the effects of the air pollutants than the males and the children and the old people were more vulnerable to the adverse affect of the pollutants than the adults.A 10 ug/m³ increase in PM_2.5 was associated with the increases of 2.15%(95% confidence interval95%CI:1.83%, 2.47%), 0.01%(95%CI:-0.05%, 0.06%), and 0.67%(95%CI:0.60%, 0.74%) in the number of clinic visits of male respiratory outpatients aged 0-17, 18-65, and ≥66 years at lag day 5, while the corresponding increases of the same age groups for the female were 2.48%(95%CI:2.14%, 2.82%), 0.46%(95%CI:0.41%, 0.51), and 0.96%(95%CI:0.89%, 1.03%), respectively.Conclusion The effect of air pollution on respiratory disease risk is different among populations of different gender and age.