The Effect of Air Pollution on Respiratory Disease Visits to the Emergency Department in Kerman, Iran

It is probable that with increase of air pollution, the rate of respiratory disease patient admissions in the emergency departments increases as well. In this study, the effect of air pollution on the rate of admission of patients with respiratory diseases in the emergency department of one of the referral educational hospitals in Kerman, Iran was investigated. Data of patients with respiratory diseases (asthma, bronchitis, pneumonia, emphysema, COPD) admitted in Afzalipour hospital during March 2006 until March 2011 were extracted based on gender and age from the archived files of the emergency department and were compared with air pollution measurements (including fine particles, NO, NO2, NOx, SO2, CO, O3) inquired from the Kerman Environmental Protection Agency with lags up to 50 days by time series through MiniTab15 and STATA11 software packages. None of the pollutants showed a significant or more than 0.2 correlation with respiratory disease visits to the emergency department, except ozone and SO2. In negative Binomial regression, only SO2 increase was associated with increased visits of female patients IRR= 1.436 (95% CI 1.004-2.051). It is probable that some air pollutants in their current concentrations in Kerman cause increase of respiratory disease patient's visits to emergency departments. However, more research is needed.