[Short-term relationship between air pollution and mortality in 13 Spanish cities].
OBJECTIVE
EMECAM is a collaborative project that seeks to evaluate the short-term effects of air pollution on mortality in Spain.


METHODS
We collected data for air pollutants (particles and gases), daily mortality (total except external, cardiovascular and respiratory causes) and co-variables (temperature, humidity, influenza and calendar variables) in 13 Spanish cities. The magnitude of the association in every city was estimated using GAM under a Poisson distribution. Combined estimates for each cause and pollutant were obtained under 'fixed effects' and 'random effects'models.


RESULTS
An increase of 10 (g/m3 in the levels of the average of the concurrent and one day lag for black smoke was associated with a 0.8% (CI: 0.4-1.1) increase in mortality. The same increase in the concentration of SO2 was associated with a 0.5% (CI: 0.1-1.0) increase in daily deaths, and a 0.6% (CI: 0.3-0.8) increase in the case of NO2. An increase of 1 mg/m3 in the levels of CO was associated with an increase of 1.5% (CI: 0.5-2.6) in daily deaths.


CONCLUSIONS
There is a short-term association between increases of daily levels of air pollutants and the number of daily deaths in Spanish cities.
Ballester
Ferran
F
Unidad de Epidemiología y Estadística. Escola Valenciana d'Estudis per a la Salut (EVES). Conselleria de Sanitat. Generalitat Valenciana. Valencia. España.
Iñíguez
Carmen
C
Sáez
Marc
M
Pérez-Hoyos
Santiago
S
Daponte
Antonio
A
Ordóñez
José M
JM
Barceló
M Antònia
MA
Taracido
Margarita
M
Arribas
Federico
F
Bellido
Juan
J
Cambra
Koldo
K
Cañada
Alvaro
A
Guillén
José Jesús
JJ
D000397:Air Pollution / Q000009:adverse effects* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D009026:Mortality / Q000639:trends*; D013030:Spain; D013997:Time Factors; D014505:Urban Population