Ambient Particulate Air Pollution and Daily Hospital Admissions in 31 Cities in Poland.

A strong and consistent association has been observed between morbidity or mortality rates and PM concentration, and is well documented in many countries. In Poland, despite poor air quality, studies concerning the evaluation of acute health effects of ambient air pollution on morbidity from respiratory or cardiovascular diseases are rare. We examined the short-term impact of PM_x concentration on hospital admission in 31 Polish cities based on the daily PM₁₀, PM_2.5 concentration, meteorological variables, and hospital data. The generalized additive model (GAM) and a random-effects meta-analysis were used to assess the impact of air pollution on morbidity within the exposed population. Almost 1.6 million cardiovascular admissions and 600 thousand respiratory disorders were analyzed. The RR values for PM₁₀-related cardiovascular and respiratory hospital admissions in Poland are equal to 1.0077 (95% confidence interval, 1.0062 to 1.0092) and 1.0218 (95% confidence interval, 1.0182 to 1.0253), respectively, while for PM_2.5 1.0088 (95% confidence interval, 1.0072 to 1.0103) and 1.0289 (95% confidence interval, 1.0244 to 1.0335), respectively. Moreover, a moderate heterogeneity of RR estimates was observed between the analyzed cities (I² values from 27% to 45%). The presented analysis confirms the significant association between hospital admission and PM_x concentration, especially during heating seasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]