School of Public Health, Key Lab of Public Health Safety of the Ministry of Education, Fudan University, Shanghai, China.
Environ Int. 2013 Jan;51:168-73. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2012.11.008. Epub 2012 Dec 12.
The Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) was originally developed in Canada. However, little is known about its validity in communicating morbidity risks. We aimed to establish the AQHI in Shanghai, China, and to compare the associations of AQHI and existing Air Pollution Index (API) with daily mortality and morbidity. We constructed the AQHI as the sum of excess total mortality associated with individual air pollutants, and then adjusted it to an arbitrary scale (0-10), according to a time-series analysis of air pollution and mortality in Shanghai from 2001 to 2008. We examined the associations of AQHI with daily mortality and morbidity, and compared these associations with API from 2005 to 2008. The coefficients of short-term associations of total mortality with particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 10 μm (PM(10)), PM(2.5) and nitrogen dioxide (NO(2)) were used in the establishment of AQHI. During 2005-2008, the AQHI showed linear non-threshold positive associations with daily mortality and morbidity. A unit increase of the PM(10)-AQHI was associated with a 0.90% [95% (confidence interval, CI), 0.43 to 1.37], 1.04% (95%CI, 0.04 to 2.04), 1.62% (95%CI, 0.39 to 2.85) and 0.51% (95%CI, 0.09 to 0.93) increase of current-day total mortality, hospital admissions, outpatient visits and emergency room visits, respectively. The PM(2.5)-AQHI showed quite similar effect estimates with the PM(10)-AQHI. In contrast, the associations for API were much weaker and generally statistically insignificant. The AQHI, compared with the existing API, provided a more effective tool to communicate the air pollution-related health risks to the public.
空气质量健康指数（AQHI）最初在加拿大开发。然而，关于它在传播发病风险方面的有效性知之甚少。我们旨在建立中国上海的 AQHI，并比较 AQHI 和现有空气污染指数（API）与每日死亡率和发病率的关联。我们根据 2001 年至 2008 年上海的空气污染和死亡率时间序列分析，将 AQHI 构建为与个别空气污染物相关的超额总死亡率之和，然后将其调整到任意比例（0-10）。我们检查了 AQHI 与每日死亡率和发病率的关联，并比较了 2005 年至 2008 年 API 的关联。总死亡率与空气动力学直径小于 10μm 的颗粒物（PM（10））、PM（2.5）和二氧化氮（NO（2））的短期关联系数用于建立 AQHI。2005-2008 年，AQHI 与每日死亡率和发病率呈线性非阈值正相关。PM（10）-AQHI 每增加一个单位，与当日总死亡率增加 0.90%（95%置信区间，0.43 至 1.37）、1.04%（95%置信区间，0.04 至 2.04）、1.62%（95%置信区间，0.39 至 2.85）和 0.51%（95%置信区间，0.09 至 0.93）有关，门诊就诊和急诊就诊。PM（2.5）-AQHI 与 PM（10）-AQHI 显示出相当相似的效应估计。相比之下，API 的关联要弱得多，通常统计学上不显著。AQHI 与现有的 API 相比，为向公众传达与空气污染相关的健康风险提供了更有效的工具。
