Erratum to: Evaluating the short-term cost of low-level local air pollution: a life satisfaction approach

Abstract Background Air pollution is one of the world’s leading mortality risk factors contributing to seven million deaths annually. COVID-19 pandemic has claimed about one million deaths in less than a year. However, it is unclear whether exposure to acute and chronic air pollution influences the COVID-19 epidemiologic curve. Methods We searched for relevant studies listed in six electronic databases between December 2019 and September 2020. We applied no language or publication status limits. Studies presented as original articles, studies that assessed risk, incidence, prevalence, or lethality of COVID-19 in relation with exposure to either short-term or long-term exposure to ambient air pollution were included. All patients regardless of age, sex and location diagnosed as having COVID-19 of any severity were taken into consideration. We synthesised results using harvest plots based on effect direction. Results Included studies were cross-sectional (n = 10), retrospective cohorts (n = 9), ecological (n = 6 of which two were time-series) and hypothesis (n = 1). Of these studies, 52 and 48% assessed the effect of short-term and long-term pollutant exposure, respectively and one evaluated both. Pollutants mostly studied were PM2.5 (64%), NO2 (50%), PM10 (43%) and O3 (29%) for acute effects and PM2.5 (85%), NO2 (39%) and O3 (23%) then PM10 (15%) for chronic effects. Most assessed COVID-19 outcomes were incidence and mortality rate. Acutely, pollutants independently associated with COVID-19 incidence and mortality were first PM2.5 then PM10, NO2 and O3 (only for incident cases). Chronically, similar relationships were found for PM2.5 and NO2. High overall risk of bias judgments (86 and 39% in short-term and long-term exposure studies, respectively) was predominantly due to a failure to adjust aggregated data for important confounders, and to a lesser extent because of a lack of comparative analysis. Conclusion The body of evidence indicates that both acute and chronic exposure to air pollution can affect COVID-19 epidemiology. The evidence is unclear for acute exposure due to a higher level of bias in existing studies as compared to moderate evidence with chronic exposure. Public health interventions that help minimize anthropogenic pollutant source and socio-economic injustice/disparities may reduce the planetary threat posed by both COVID-19 and air pollution pandemics.

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The interplay of gender, social context, and long-term unemployment effects on subjective health trajectories

BMC Public Health ◽

10.1186/s12889-021-10324-8 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Laura Altweck ◽

Stefanie Hahm ◽

Holger Muehlan ◽

Tobias Gfesser ◽

Christine Ulke ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Life Satisfaction ◽

Social Context ◽

Negative Impact ◽

Subjective Health ◽

Short Term ◽

Self Rated Health ◽

Health Trajectories ◽

Lower Baseline ◽

Baseline Values

Abstract Background While a strong negative impact of unemployment on health has been established, the present research examined the lesser studied interplay of gender, social context and job loss on health trajectories. Methods Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel was used, which provided a representative sample of 6838 participants. Using latent growth modelling the effects of gender, social context (East vs. West Germans), unemployment (none, short-term or long-term), and their interactions were examined on health (single item measures of self-rated health and life satisfaction respectively). Results Social context in general significantly predicted the trajectories of self-rated health and life satisfaction. Most notably, data analysis revealed that West German women reported significantly lower baseline values of self-rated health following unemployment and did not recover to the levels of their East German counterparts. Only long-term, not short-term unemployment was related to lower baseline values of self-rated health, whereas, in relation to baseline values of life satisfaction, both types of unemployment had a similar negative effect. Conclusions In an economic crisis, individuals who already carry a higher burden, and not only those most directly affected economically, may show the greatest health effects.

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The Impact of Short-Term Exposure to Air Pollution on the Exhaled Breath of Healthy Adults

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s21072518 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (7) ◽

pp. 2518

Author(s):

Ariana Lammers ◽

Anne H. Neerincx ◽

Susanne J. H. Vijverberg ◽

Cristina Longo ◽

Nicole A. H. Janssen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Air Pollution ◽

Ambient Air ◽

Healthy Adults ◽

Partial Least Square ◽

Exhaled Breath ◽

Short Term ◽

Post Exposure ◽

Short Term Exposure ◽

Validation Set ◽

The Impact

Environmental factors, such as air pollution, can affect the composition of exhaled breath, and should be well understood before biomarkers in exhaled breath can be used in clinical practice. Our objective was to investigate whether short-term exposures to air pollution can be detected in the exhaled breath profile of healthy adults. In this study, 20 healthy young adults were exposed 2–4 times to the ambient air near a major airport and two highways. Before and after each 5 h exposure, exhaled breath was analyzed using an electronic nose (eNose) consisting of seven different cross-reactive metal-oxide sensors. The discrimination between pre and post-exposure was investigated with multilevel partial least square discriminant analysis (PLSDA), followed by linear discriminant and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis, for all data (71 visits), and for a training (51 visits) and validation set (20 visits). Using all eNose measurements and the training set, discrimination between pre and post-exposure resulted in an area under the ROC curve of 0.83 (95% CI = 0.76–0.89) and 0.84 (95% CI = 0.75–0.92), whereas it decreased to 0.66 (95% CI = 0.48–0.84) in the validation set. Short-term exposure to high levels of air pollution potentially influences the exhaled breath profiles of healthy adults, however, the effects may be minimal for regular daily exposures.

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