Department of Pediatrics at Centro Hospitalar de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, Avenida da Noruega-Lordelo, Vila Real 5000-508, Portugal.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2011 Oct;8(10):4013-24. doi: 10.3390/ijerph8104013. Epub 2011 Oct 20.
Up to now no study has investigated the lag structure of children's respiratory morbidity due to surface ozone. In the present study, we investigate the lag structure and the general effect of surface ozone exposure on children and adolescents' respiratory morbidity using data from a particularly well suited area in southern Europe to assess the health effects of surface ozone. The effects of surface ozone are estimated using the recently developed distributed lag non-linear models, allowing for a relatively long timescale, while controlling for weather effects, a range of other air pollutants, and long and short term patterns. The public health significance of the estimated effects is higher than has been previously reported in the literature, providing evidence contrary to the conjecture that the surface ozone-morbidity association is mainly due to short-term harvesting. In fact, our data analysis reveals that the effects of surface ozone at medium and long timescales (harvesting-resistant) are substantially larger than the effects at shorter timescales (harvesting-prone), a finding that is consistent with all children and adolescents being affected by high surface ozone concentrations, and not just the very frail.
迄今为止，尚无研究调查儿童因地面臭氧而导致呼吸道发病率的滞后结构。在本研究中，我们使用来自欧洲南部一个特别适合评估地面臭氧健康影响的地区的数据，调查地面臭氧暴露对儿童和青少年呼吸道发病率的滞后结构和总体影响。使用最近开发的分布式滞后非线性模型来估计地面臭氧的影响，该模型允许较长的时间尺度，同时控制天气影响、一系列其他空气污染物以及长期和短期模式。与文献中以前报道的相比，估计影响的公共卫生意义更高，这为地面臭氧发病率之间的关联主要是由于短期收获的假设提供了相反的证据。事实上，我们的数据分析表明，地面臭氧在中长时间尺度（抗收获）上的影响远远大于短时间尺度（易收获）上的影响，这一发现与所有儿童和青少年都受到高地面臭氧浓度的影响的情况一致，而不仅仅是非常脆弱的儿童和青少年。
