Health effects of the September 2009 dust storm in Sydney, Australia: did emergency department visits and hospital admissions increase?

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: During September 2009, a large dust storm was experienced in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Extremely high levels of particulate matter were recorded, with daily average levels of coarse matter (<10 ?m) peaking over 11,000 ?g/m3 and fine (<2.5 ?m) over 1,600 ?g/m3. We conducted an analysis to determine whether the dust storm was associated with increases in all-cause, cardiovascular, respiratory and asthma-related emergency department presentations and hospital admissions. METHODS: We used distributed-lag Poisson generalized models to analyse the emergency department presentations and hospital admissions adjusted for pollutants, humidity, temperature and day of week and seasonal effects to obtain estimates of relative risks associated with the dust storm. RESULTS: The dust storm period was associated with large increases in asthma emergency department visits (relative risk 1.23, 95% confidence interval 1.10-1.38, p?

SUBMITTER: Merrifield A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3639126 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature