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Associations between fine particulate air pollution and cause specific mortality in 337 cities in Latin America from 2009 to 201
Abstract   Open access   Peer reviewed

Associations between fine particulate air pollution and cause specific mortality in 337 cities in Latin America from 2009 to 201

Nelson Gouveia, Jordan Rodriguez Hernandez, Ana Ortigoza, Josiah Kephart, Brisa Sanchez, Ana V Diex Roux and Goro Yamada
Environmental health perspectives. Supplements, v 2023(1)
17 Sep 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1289/isee.2023.OP-174
url
https://doi.org/10.1289/isee.2023.OP-174View
Published, Version of Record (VoR)Maybe Open Access (Publisher Bronze),  Open

Abstract

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Air pollution has become a major problem in Latin America with its rapid and unplanned urbanization. Yet no studies have examined the association of mortality and air pollutants in the region across a wide range of cities. We aimed to evaluate whether ambient levels of PM2.5 from satellite measurements are associated with cardiovascular and respiratory mortality among adults in 337 cities from 9 Latin-American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, and Panama). METHOD: We compiled mortality, PM2.5 and temperature data for all cities for the period 2009-2015. For each city, we evaluated the association between monthly changes in PM2.5 and cause-specific mortality for each sex using Poisson models, adjusted for seasonality, long-term trend, and temperature. To accommodate possible different associations between changes in mortality and PM2.5 by age, we included interaction terms between changes in PM2.5 and age (20-39, 40-59, and 60+ years) in the models. Then, we combined the city-specific estimates using a random effects meta-regression to obtain mortality relative risks (RR) for each sex and age group. RESULTS: We analyzed 3,026,861 and 1,222,623 cardiovascular and respiratory deaths, respectively from a total population that represents 41% of the population of Latin America. We observed that increases in monthly PM2.5 were associated with increases in CVD and respiratory mortality in both sexes. After stratification by age, for CVD associations increased with age but were statistically significant only for males aged 60+ years (RR = 1.02, 95%CI 1.01,1.03). For respiratory mortality associations were larger in the middle aged (40-60) but mostly not significant, especially after adjustment for temperature. CONCLUSIONS: Ambient air pollution is associated with CVD mortality in elderly population in Latin America, a region with different socioeconomic, environmental and health contexts than higher income cities from where most of the evidence so far comes from.

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