Hashizume Masahiro, Ueda Kayo, Nishiwaki Yuji, Michikawa Takehiro, Onozuka Daisuke
Department of International Health, Institute of Tropical Medicine, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan.
Nihon Eiseigaku Zasshi. 2010 May;65(3):413-21. doi: 10.1265/jjh.65.413.
Asian dust, called 'kosa' in Japan, is the long-range transport of atmospheric pollutants originating from the desert areas of China and Mongolia. Although Asian dust has a long history of appearing in Japan, it is only quite recently that there is increasing concern for its possible adverse health effects. We reviewed the epidemiologic evidence of potential health effects of Asian dust events. PubMed was used to search for the following keywords: Asian dust, yellow sand, desert dust, dust storm, sandstorm, mortality, death, morbidity, hospitalization, hospital admission, health, pulmonary and respiratory. The search was limited to the epidemiologic studies published between January 1980 and May 2009. JMEDPlus was used to search for Japanese literature. Seventeen studies were retrieved from PubMed and one study from JMEDPlus. In addition, one study was identified for reviewing from the references of another study. In total, we identified 19 epidemiologic studies (3 for mortality, 13 for hospital visits or admissions and 3 for respiratory functions or symptoms) mainly from Taiwan and Korea. There were many combinations of outcomes and lagged exposures examined, and some suggested possible associations of dust exposure with an increase in mortality and hospital visits and admissions due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, whereas the rest of the studies did not show statistically significant associations. The evidence from these studies was limited because exposure assessments were inadequately described and potential confounders were insufficiently controlled. Well-designed epidemiological studies are required to clarify any potential health effects of Asian dust events in Japan.
亚洲沙尘在日本被称为“黄沙”，是源自中国和蒙古沙漠地区的大气污染物的远距离传输。尽管亚洲沙尘在日本出现已有很长历史，但直到最近人们才越来越关注其可能对健康产生的不利影响。我们回顾了亚洲沙尘事件对健康潜在影响的流行病学证据。利用PubMed搜索了以下关键词：亚洲沙尘、黄沙、沙漠沙尘、沙尘暴、沙暴、死亡率、死亡、发病率、住院、入院、健康、肺部和呼吸道。搜索仅限于1980年1月至2009年5月发表的流行病学研究。利用JMEDPlus搜索日文文献。从PubMed检索到17项研究，从JMEDPlus检索到1项研究。此外，从另一项研究的参考文献中确定了1项研究进行综述。我们总共确定了19项流行病学研究（3项关于死亡率，13项关于就诊或入院情况，3项关于呼吸功能或症状），主要来自台湾和韩国。研究考察了多种结局和滞后暴露的组合，一些研究表明沙尘暴露可能与心血管和呼吸系统疾病导致的死亡率、就诊和入院人数增加有关，而其余研究未显示出统计学上的显著关联。这些研究的证据有限，因为暴露评估描述不充分，潜在混杂因素未得到充分控制。需要设计良好的流行病学研究来阐明亚洲沙尘事件在日本对健康的任何潜在影响。
