J Prev Med Public Health.
2006 Jul;39(4):309-316.
Effects of Air Pollution on Asthma in Seoul: Comparisons across Subject Characteristic
- Affiliations
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- 1Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health and Institute of Health and Environment, Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea. hokim@snu.ac.kr
- 2Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of Washington, Seattle, USA.
- 3Primary Health Care Team, Research Department, Korea Health Insurance Review Agency, Seoul, Korea.
Abstract
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OBJECTIVES: Korean epidemiological studies have used
reduced samples according to the subject's characteristics,
such as the health services provided, the historical note
with asthma, and age, to examine the acute effect of air
pollution on asthma using the Korean National Health
Insurance records. However, there have been few studies
on whether the effects shown in these reduced samples are
different from those of all samples. This study compared
the effects of air pollution on asthma attacks in three
reduced samples with those of entire samples.
METHODS: The air pollution data for PM10, CO, SO2, NO2,
and O3 and weather conditions including temperature,
relative humidity, and air pressure in Seoul, 2002, were
obtained from outdoor monitoring stations in Seoul. The
emergency hospital visits with an asthma attack in Seoul,
2002 were extracted from the Korean National Health
Insurance records. From these, the reduced samples were
created by health service, historical notes with asthma, and
age. A case-crossover design was adopted and the acute
effects of air pollution on asthma were estimated after
adjusting for weather, time trend, and seasonality. The
model was applied to each reduced sample and the entire
sample.
RESULTS: With respect to the health service, the effects
on outpatients were similar to those for the total sample but
were different for inpatients. These similar effect sizes were
also observed in the reduced samples according to the
historical note with asthma and age. The relative risks of
PM10, CO, SO2, NO2, and O3 among the reduced and entire
samples were 1.03, 1.04-1.05, 1.02-1.03, 1.04-1.06, and
1.10-1.17, respectively.
CONCLUSIONS: There was no clear evidence to show a
difference between the reduced samples and the entire
samples.