Assessment of hospitalizations from asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and acute bronchitis in relation to air pollution in İstanbul, Turkey

There is increasing concern about the air quality of İstanbul because of increasing emission sources and their possible health effects. This study aims to assess the effects of air pollutants (PM₁₀, PM_2.5, and NO₂) on hospital admissions for asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and acute bronchitis to better understand the association between air pollution and respiratory diseases in the city. In order to investigate the health effects of air pollutants (Excess Relative Risk, ERR), a time-series analysis of daily respiratory hospital admissions and outdoor air pollutants was performed using single-pollutant Poisson generalized linear model (GLM) over a 5-year period (2013–2017) at different time lags (0–9). Our results show that air pollutants have significant immediate and delayed effects on hospital admissions depending on different diseases. NO₂ and PM_2.5 have the highest risk effects on the hospital admissions. An increase in the PM_2.5 level by 10 μg/m³ increased admission rates for acute bronchitis by 8.06 % (95 % CI: 3.36–19.4 %) at lag 9 according to our results. This study showed that air pollution is associated with increased hospital admissions for some of the most common and serious respiratory diseases in Turkey.