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We propose a model for multiple waves of an epidemic that decomposes the health outcome of interest into the sum of scaled skew normal curves. When applied to daily COVID-19 mortality in six regions (Japan, Italy, Belgium, Ontario, Texas, and Peru), this model provides three notable results. First, when fit to data from early 2020 to May 31, 2022, the estimated skew normal curves substantially overlap with the dates of COVID-19 waves in Ontario and Belgium, as determined by their respective health authorities. Second, the asymmetry of the skew normal curves changes over time - they progress from increasing more quickly to decreasing more quickly, indicating changes in the relative speed that daily COVID-19 mortality rises and falls over time. Third, most regions have day-of-the-week effects, which suggests that day-of-the-week effects should be included when modeling daily COVID-19 mortality. We conclude by discussing limitations and possible extensions of this model and its results, including commenting on its applicability to potential future COVID-19 waves., Competing Interests: No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s)., (© 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.)

Background: People living in Australian cities face increased mortality risks from exposure to extreme air pollution events due to bushfires and dust storms. However, the burden of mortality attributable to exceptional PM 2.5 levels has not been well characterised. We assessed the burden of mortality due to PM 2.5 pollution events in Australian capital cities between 2001 and 2020., Methods: For this health impact assessment, we obtained data on daily counts of deaths for all non-accidental causes and ages from the Australian National Vital Statistics Register. Daily concentrations of PM 2.5 were estimated at a 5 km grid cell, using a Random Forest statistical model of data from air pollution monitoring sites combined with a range of satellite and land use-related data. We calculated the exceptional PM 2.5 levels for each extreme pollution exposure day using the deviation from a seasonal and trend loess decomposition model. The burden of mortality was examined using a relative risk concentration-response function suggested in the literature., Findings: Over the 20-year study period, we estimated 1454 (95 % CI 987, 1920) deaths in the major Australian cities attributable to exceptional PM 2.5 exposure levels. The mortality burden due to PM 2.5 exposure on extreme pollution days was considerable. Variations were observed across Australia. Despite relatively low daily PM 2.5 levels compared to global averages, all Australian cities have extreme pollution exposure days, with PM 2.5 concentrations exceeding the World Health Organisation Air Quality Guideline standard for 24-h exposure. Our analysis results indicate that nearly one-third of deaths from extreme air pollution exposure can be prevented with a 5 % reduction in PM 2.5 levels on days with exceptional pollution., Interpretation: Exposure to exceptional PM 2.5 events was associated with an increased mortality burden in Australia's cities. Policies and coordinated action are needed to manage the health risks of extreme air pollution events due to bushfires and dust storms under climate change., Competing Interests: The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Lucas Hertzog reports financial support was provided by Healthy Environments and Lives (HEAL) Network - 10.13039/501100000925National Health and Medical Research Council Special Initiative in Human Health and Environmental Change (Grant No. 2008937). The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest., (© 2024 The Authors.)

Background and Aim: Short-term associations between air pollution and mortality have been well reported in Japan, but the historical changes in mortality risk remain unknown. We examined temporal changes in the mortality risks associated with short-term exposure to four criteria air pollutants in selected Japanese cities., Methods: We collected daily mortality data for non-accidental causes (n = 5,748,206), cardiovascular (n = 1,938,743) and respiratory diseases (n = 777,266), and air pollutants (sulfur dioxide [SO 2 ], nitrogen dioxide [NO 2 ], suspended particulate matter [SPM], and oxidants [Ox]) in 10 cities from 1977 to 2015. We performed two-stage analysis with 5-year stratification to estimate the relative risk (RR) of mortality per 10-unit increase in the 2-day moving average of air pollutant concentrations. In the first stage, city-specific associations were assessed using a quasi-Poisson generalized linear regression model. In the second stage, city-specific estimates were pooled using a random-effects meta-analysis. Linear trend and ratio of relative risks (RRR) were computed to examine temporal changes., Results: When stratifying the analysis by every 5 years, average concentrations in each sub-period decreased for SO 2 , NO 2 , and SPM (14.2-2.3 ppb, 29.4-17.5 ppb, 52.1-20.6 μg/m 3 , respectively) but increased for Ox (29.1-39.1 ppb) over the study period. We found evidence of a negative linear trend in the risk of cardiovascular mortality associated with SPM across sub-periods. However, the risks of non-accidental and respiratory mortality per 10-unit increase in SPM concentration were significantly higher in the most recent period than in the earliest period. Other gaseous pollutants did not show such temporal risk change. The risks posed by these pollutants were slightly to moderately heterogeneous in the different cities., Conclusions: The mortality risks associated with short-term exposure to SPM changed, with different trends by cause of death, in 10 cities over 39 years whereas the risks for other gaseous pollutants were relatively stable., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Background: The evidence on the association between ultrafine (UFP) particles and mortality is still inconsistent. Moreover, health effects of specific UFP sources have not been explored. We assessed the impact of UFP sources on daily mortality in Barcelona, Helsinki, London, and Zurich., Methods: UFP sources were previously identified and quantified for the four cities: daily contributions of photonucleation, two traffic sources (fresh traffic and urban, with size mode around 30 nm and 70 nm, respectively), and secondary aerosols were obtained from data from an urban background station. Different periods were investigated in each city: Barcelona 2013-2016, Helsinki 2009-2016, London 2010-2016, and Zurich 2011-2014. The associations between total particle number concentrations (PNC) and UFP sources and daily (natural, cardiovascular [CVD], and respiratory) mortality were investigated using city-specific generalized linear models (GLM) with quasi-Poisson regression., Results: We found inconsistent results across cities, sources, and lags for associations with natural, CVD, and respiratory mortality. Increased risk was observed for total PNC and natural mortality in Helsinki (lag 2; 1.3% [0.07%, 2.5%]), CVD mortality in Barcelona (lag 1; 3.7% [0.17%, 7.4%]) and Zurich (lag 0; 3.8% [0.31%, 7.4%]), and respiratory mortality in London (lag 3; 2.6% [0.84%, 4.45%]) and Zurich (lag 1; 9.4% [1.0%, 17.9%]). A similar pattern of associations between health outcomes and total PNC was followed by the fresh traffic source, for which we also found the same associations and lags as for total PNC. The urban source (mostly aged traffic) was associated with respiratory mortality in Zurich (lag 1; 12.5% [1.7%, 24.2%]) and London (lag 3; 2.4% [0.90%, 4.0%]) while the secondary source was associated with respiratory mortality in Zurich (lag 1: 12.0% [0.63%, 24.5%]) and Helsinki (4.7% [0.11%, 9.5%]). Reduced risk for the photonucleation source was observed for respiratory mortality in Barcelona (lag 2, -8.6% [-14.5%, -2.4%]) and for CVD mortality in Helsinki, as this source is present only in clean atmospheres (lag 1, -1.48 [-2.75, -0.21])., Conclusions: We found inconsistent results across cities, sources and lags for associations with natural, CVD, and respiratory mortality., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.)

Background: Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been surging globally. Risk strata in medical attention are of dynamic significance for apposite assessment and supply distribution. Presently, no known cultured contrivance is available to fill this gap of this pandemic. The aim of this study is to develop a predictive model based on vector autoregressive moving average (VARMA) model of various orders for gender based daily COVID-19 incidence in Nigeria. This study also aims to proffer empirical evidence that compares incidence between male and female for COVID-19 risk factors., Methods: Wilcoxon signed-rank test is employed to investigate the significance of the difference in the gender distributions of the daily incidence. A VARMA model of various orders is formulated for the gender based daily COVID-19 incidence in Nigeria. The optimal VARMA model is identified using Bayesian information criterion. Also, a predictive model based on univariate autoregressive moving average model is formulated for the daily death cases in Nigeria. Fold change is estimated based on crude case-fatality risk to investigate whether there is massive underreporting and under-testing of COVID-19 cases in Nigeria., Results: Daily incidence is higher in males on most days from 11 April 2020 to 12 September 2020. Result of Wilcoxon signed-rank test shows that incidence among male is significantly higher than female ( p -value < 2.22 × 10 -16 ). White neural network test shows that daily female incidence is not linear in mean ( p -value = 0.00058746) while daily male incidence is linear in mean ( p -value = 0.4257). McLeod-Li test shows that there is autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity in the female incidence (Maximum p -value = 1.4277 × 10 -5 ) and male incidence (Maximum p -value = 9.0816 × 10 -14 ) at 5% level of significance. Ljung-Box test (Tsay, 2014) shows that the daily incidence cases are not random ( p -value=0.0000). The optimal VARMA model for male and female daily incidence is VARMA (0,1). The optimal model for the Nigeria's daily COVID-19 death cases is identified to be ARIMA (0,1,1). There is no evidence of massive underreporting and under-testing of COVID-19 cases in Nigeria., Conclusions: Comparison of the observed incidence with fitted data by gender shows that the optimal VARMA and ARIMA models fit the data well. Findings highlight the significant roles of gender on daily COVID-19 incidence in Nigeria., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no competing interests., (© 2021 Olusola-Makinde and Makinde.)

The increase in the frequency and intensity of heat waves is one of the most unquestionable effects of climate change. Therefore, the progressive increase in maximum temperatures will have a clear incidence on the increase in mortality, especially in countries that are vulnerable due to geographical location or their socioeconomic characteristics. Different research studies show that the mortality attributable to heat is decreasing globally, and research is centred on future scenarios. One way of detecting the existence of a lesser impact of heat is through the increase in the so-called temperature of minimum mortality (TMM). The objective of this study is to determine the temporal evolution of TMM in two Spanish provinces (Seville and Madrid) during the 1983-2018 period and to evaluate whether the rate of adaptation to heat is appropriate. We used the gross rate of daily mortality due to natural causes (CIEX: A00-R99) and the maximum daily temperature (°C) to determine the quinquennial TMM using dispersion diagrams and realizing fit using quadratic and cubic curvilinear estimation. The same analysis was carried out at the annual level, by fitting an equation to the line of TMM for each province, whose slope, if significant (p < 0.05) represents the annual rate of variation in TMM. The results observed in this quinquennial analysis showed that the TMM is higher in Seville than in Madrid and that it is higher among men than women in the two provinces. Furthermore, there was an increase in TMM in all of the quinquennium and a clear decrease in the final period. At the annual level, the linear fit was significant for Madrid for the whole population and corresponds to an increase in the TMM of 0.58 °C per decade. For Seville the linear fits were significant and the slopes of the fitted lines was 1.1 °C/decade. Both Madrid and Seville are adapting to the increase in temperatures observed over the past 36 years, and women are the group that is more susceptible to heat, compared to men. The implementation of improvements and evaluation of prevention plans to address the impact of heat waves should continue in order to ensure adequate adaptation in the future., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The most recent extreme heat recorded in Europe re-alerts the world to the threat of heat stress. Future extreme heat events are reported to be more frequent, long-lasting, and intense. The intense exposure to hot temperatures can cause an excess of heat-related deaths, leading to an increasing risk of heat-related health. In reducing Heat Health Risk (HHR), the use of fine-scale evidence-based mapping of heat-related health risk index (HHRI) and its underlying contributors is essential for policy-making and site-specific action plans. However, its use is still considered to be at an early stage, especially in high-density cities like Hong Kong. This study conducted a spatially explicit assessment of HHR in Hong Kong and constructed a HHRI based on indicators categorized through Principle Component Analysis (PCA) into four meaningful components representing social/language, social isolation, socioeconomic, and urbanization/environmental risks. The applicability of the index was validated against heat-related mortality data at the community level. The community-level maps of HHRI and its subcomponents revealed that portions of Kowloon Peninsula had always suffered exceptionally high HHR ten years ago and after, but the hot spots and problematic communities experienced displacement and the dominant underlying factors of their HHR also varied. Results also showed that HHRI correlated fairly well with the heat-related deaths ratio (R 2  = 0.60) at the community level for most of Hong Kong (62.33% of all communities that contain 81.69% of total population). Our analysis results helped generate an evidence-based index to assess HHR in high-density cities like Hong Kong and provided fine-scale maps of the index and its subcomponents, with the aim of benefiting site-specific policy making and optimizing the existing action plans., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare they have no competing financial interests., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Spain is a country of southern Europe that is prone to drought, and it is likely that this type of hydrological extreme will become substantially more frequent and intense in the 21st century, which could lead to greater health risks if adequate adaptive measures are not taken. For the first time, we calculated the relative risks (RRs) of daily natural (ICD10: A00-R99), circulatory (ICD10: I00-I99), and respiratory (ICD: J00-J99) mortality associated with drought events in each province of Spain from 2000 to 2009. For this purpose, we compared the performance of the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) and Standardized Precipitation- Evapotranspiration Index (SPEI) obtained at 1 month of accumulation (denoted as SPI-1/SPEI-1) to estimate the short-term risks of droughts on daily mortality using generalised linear models. Attributable risks were calculated from the RR data. The main findings of this study revealed statistically significant associations between the different causes of daily mortality and drought events for the different provinces of Spain, and clear spatial heterogeneity was observed across the country. Western Spain (northwest to southwest) was the region most affected, in contrast to northern and eastern Spain, and daily respiratory mortality was the group most strongly linked to the incidence of drought conditions. Moreover, for a considerable number of provinces, the effect of SPI-1 and SPEI-1 largely reflected the impact of atmospheric pollution and/or heatwaves; however, for other regions, the effect of drought conditions on daily mortality remained when these different climatic events were controlled in Poisson models. When the performances of the SPEI and SPI were compared to identify and estimate the risks of drought on daily mortality, the results were very similar, although there were slight differences in the specific causes of daily mortality., (Copyright © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Climate change scenarios indicate an increase in the intensity and frequency of droughts in several regions of the world in the 21st century, especially in Southern Europe, highlighting the threat to global health. For the first time, a time-series diagnostic study has been conducted regarding the impact of droughts in Galicia, a region in north-western Spain, on daily natural-cause mortality, daily circulatory-cause mortality, and daily respiratory-cause mortality, from 1983 to 2013. We analysed the drought periods over the area of interest using the daily Standardized Evapotranspiration-Precipitation Index (SPEI) and the daily Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), obtained at various timescales (1, 3, 6, 9 months), to identify and classify the intensity of drought and non-drought periods. Generalized linear models with the Poisson regression link were used to calculate the Relative Risks (RRs) of different causes of mortality, and the percentage of Attributable Risk Mortality (%AR) was calculated based on RRs data. According to our findings, there were statistically significant (p < 0.05) associations between drought periods, measured by both the daily SPEI and SPI, and daily mortality in all provinces of Galicia (except Pontevedra) for different timescales. Furthermore, drought periods had a greater influence on daily mortality in the interior provinces of Galicia than in the coastal regions, with Lugo being the most affected. In short term, the effect of droughts (along with heatwaves) on daily mortality was observed in interior regions and was mainly explained by atmospheric pollution effect throughout 2000 to 2009 period in Ourense, being respiratory causes of mortality the group most strongly associated. The fact that droughts are likely to become increasingly frequent and intense in the context of climate change and the lack of studies that have considered the impact of droughts on specific causes of mortality make this type of analysis necessary., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Several studies suggested short-term exposure to air pollution might be associated with suicide mortality, although results have been inconsistent and vary depending upon the type of air contaminants. While seasonal variation associated with suicide was reported to occur and that in the spring and early summer there are peaks in ozone (O 3 ) distribution, the relationship between these two parameters is not known. The aim of this study was to examine the potential association between O 3 levels and daily mortality rate related to suicide in Taipei for the period 2004-2008 using a time-stratified case-crossover analysis. In our single pollutant model without adjustment for other pollutants, the risk of suicide increased by 11% on warm days and 15% on cool days for each interquartile range (IQR) rise in O 3 concentration, respectively. The relationship was positive but did not reach significance. In our two-pollutant models, O 3 remained non-significant on warm days after inclusion of one of any other ambient air contaminants into the model. However, on cool days, a significant association was found between O 3 levels and enhanced risk of mortality due to suicide after nitrogen dioxide (NO 2 ) or carbon monoxide (CO) were included. The overall positive but not significant findings of elevated risk of mortality frequently attributed to suicide on days with higher O 3 levels suggest that outdoor exposures to this gaseous contaminant may contribute to increases in daily mortality rate related to suicide.

Many of the studies that analyze the future impact of climate change on mortality assume that the temperature that constitutes a heat wave will not change over time. This is unlikely, however, given the process of adapting to heat changes, prevention plans, and improvements in social and health infrastructure. The objective of this study is to analyze whether, during the 1983-2013 period, there has been a temporal change in the maximum daily temperatures that constitute a heat wave (T threshold ) in Spain, and to investigate whether there has been variation in the attributable risk (AR) associated with mortality due to high temperatures in this period. This study uses daily mortality data for natural causes except accidents CIEX: A00-R99 in municipalities of over 10,000 inhabitants in 10 Spanish provinces and maximum temperature data from observatories located in province capitals. The time series is divided into three periods: 1983-1992, 1993-2003 and 2004-2013. For each period and each province, the value of T threshold was calculated using scatter-plot diagram of the daily mortality pre-whitened series. For each period and each province capitals, it has been calculated the number of heat waves and quantifying the impact on mortality through generalized linear model (GLM) methodology with the Poisson regression link. These models permits obtained the relative risks (RR) and attributable risks (AR). Via a meta-analysis, using the Global RR and AR were calculated the heat impact for the total of the 10 provinces. The results show that in the first two periods RR remained constant RR: 1.14 (CI95%: 1.09 1.19) and RR: 1.14 (CI95%: 1.10 1.18), while the third period shows a sharp decrease with respect to the prior two periods RR: 1.01 (CI95%: 1.00 1.01); the difference is statistically significant. In Spain there has been a sharp decrease in mortality attributable to heat over the past 10 years. The observed variation in RR puts into question the results of numerous studies that analyze the future impact of heat on mortality in different temporal scenarios and show it to be constant over time., (Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Studies that analyse the impact on mortality of particulate matter (PM) produced by biomass combustion from wildfires mostly focus on a single city or on cities in different countries, with very few concentrating on one country as a whole. Accordingly, the aim of this paper was to analyse the impact that PM has on daily mortality in Spain on days with biomass combustion from wildfires. To analyse natural PM advections the Ministry of Agriculture and Fishing, Food & Environment divides Spain into 9 geographical regions. One province representative of each region for was selected analysis purposes, with provincial daily natural-cause mortality across the period 2004-2009 as the dependent variable, and daily mean PM concentrations in the provincial capital as the independent variable. We controlled for the effect of other chemical pollutants (NO 2 and O 3 ), maximum daily temperature on heat-wave days, day of the week, trends, seasonalities and the autoregressive nature of the series, using generalised linear models with the Poisson regression link to calculate relative risks (RRs) and the increase in RR (IRR) of PM-related mortality. The analysis was performed for days with and without biomass advections (DBA and DNBA respectively), with a breakdown by year, summer, and the remainder of the year (i.e., excluding summer). The results indicated that daily mean PM concentrations were higher on DBA than on DNBA, with statistically significant differences in most provinces. Furthermore, PM 10 was associated with higher daily mortality on DBA in regions where wildfires were most frequent, but not in the remaining provinces. This translated as an IRR per 10μg/m 3 of PM of 7.93 (2.36-13.81) in the North-west, 3.76 (1.36-6.22) in the Centre and 4.46 (2.99-5.94) in the South-west, values which in all cases were statistically higher than those obtained on DNBA. The increase in PM caused by biomass advections from wildfires is linked to a significant IRR of mortality in Spain. Hence, the fact that wildfires are likely to become increasingly frequent in the context of climate change makes this type of analysis particularly necessary., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Objective: To study the influence of daily air temperature on daily chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mortality in residents in Ningbo. Methods: A time-series analysis using distributional lag non-linear model (DLNM) was conducted to estimate the attributable numbers and fraction of average air temperature on the daily COPD mortality in Ningbo from 2011 to 2016, by controlling the long-term time trend, day of week, air pollutants and other weather variables. Results: A reverse J-shape relationship was found between the average air temperature and COPD mortality, and the minimum-mortality temperature (MMT) was 25.5 ℃. The relative risks of extreme low and extreme high air temperature over lag 0-14 d were 2.767 (95 %CI : 1.950-3.928) and 1.197 (95 %CI : 1.021-1.404). In total, 31.62% (95 %CI : 23.05%-38.89%) of COPD mortality (4 963 cases, 95 %CI : 3 469-6 027) was attributable to non-MMT exposure, More attributable deaths were due to low air temperature, with a fraction of 30.41% corresponding to 4 772 deaths, compared with 1.22% and 192 deaths due to high air temperature. Low air temperature and high temperature were more likely to influence the mortality in females and those aged ≥65 years, but the influence was not significant in people aged <65 years. Conclusion: Both high and low air temperature were associated with an increased risk of COPD mortality in residents in Ningbo, especially during cold season, related measures on disease prevention should be taken to protect vulnerable population to reduce the risk of COPD mortality.

According to the WHO, 3 million deaths are attributable to air pollution due to particulate matter (PM) world-wide. However, there are no specific updated studies which calculate short-term PM-related cause specific mortality in Spain. The objective is to quantify the relative risks (RRs) and attributable risks (ARs) of daily mortality associated with PM 10 concentrations, registered in Spanish provinces and to calculate the number of PM-related deaths. We calculated daily mortality due to natural (ICD-10: A00 R99), circulatory (ICD-10: I00 I99) and respiratory causes (ICD-10: J00 J99) for each province across the period 2000-2009. Mean daily concentrations of PM 10 , NO 2 and O 3 was used. For the estimate of RRs and ARs, we used generalised linear models with a Poisson link. A meta-analysis was used to estimate RRs and ARs in the provinces with statically significant results. The overall RRs obtained for these provinces, corresponding to increases of 10 μ g/m 3 in PM 10 concentrations were 1.009 (95% CI: 1.006 1011) for natural, 1.026 (95% CI: 1.019 1033) for respiratory, and 1.009 (95% CI: 1.006 1012) for circulatory-cause mortality. This amounted to an annual overall total of 2683 deaths (95% CI: 852 4354) due to natural, 651 (95% CI: 359 1026) due to respiratory, and 556 (95% CI: 116 1012) due to circulatory causes, with 90% of this mortality lying below the WHO guideline values. This study provides an updated estimate of the effect had by this type of pollutant on causes of mortality, and constitutes an important basis for reinforcing public health measures., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Many studies have examined the effects of air pollution on daily mortality over the past two decades. However, information on the relationship between levels of coarse particles (PM2.5-10) and daily mortality is relatively sparse due to the limited availability of monitoring data. Furthermore, the results are inconsistent. In the current study, the association between coarse particle levels and daily mortality in Taipei, Taiwan's largest city, which has a subtropical climate, was undertaken for the period 2006-2008 using a time-stratified case-crossover analysis. For the single pollutant model (without adjustment for other pollutants), PM2.5-10 showed statistically significant association with total mortality both on warm and cool days, with an interquartile range increase associated with a 11% (95% CI = 6%-17%) and 4% (95% CI = 1%-7%) rise in number of total deaths, respectively. In two-pollutant models, PM2.5-10 remained significant effects on total mortality after the inclusion of SO₂ and O₃ both on warm and cool days. We observed no significant associations between PM2.5-10 and daily mortality from respiratory diseases both on warm and cool days. For daily mortality from circulatory diseases, the effect of PM2.5-10 remained significant when SO₂ or O₃ was added in the regression model both on warm and cool days. Future studies of this type in cities with varying climates and cultures are needed.

Background: In most regions of the world, levels and constituents of the air pollution mixture have substantially changed over the last decades., Aims: To evaluate if the effects of PM10 and NO2 on daily emergency hospital admissions and mortality have changed during a ~10 year period in Switzerland; to retrospectively estimate prevention potential of different policy choices., Methods: Thirteen Poisson-regression models across Switzerland were developed using daily PM10 and NO2 levels from central monitors and accounting for several temporal and seasonal confounders. Time trends of effects were evaluated with an interaction variable. Distributed lag models with 28 days exposure window were used to retrospectively predict missed prevention potential for each region., Results: Overall, emergency hospitalizations and mortality from any medical cause increased by 0.2% (95% Confidence Interval [95% CI]: 0.01, 0.33) and 0.2% (95% CI: -0.1, 0.6) for a 10 µg/m(3) increment of PM10, and 0.7% (95% CI: 0.1, 1.3) for NO2 and mortality. Over the study period, the association between respiratory emergencies and PM10 changed by a factor of 1.017 (95% CI: 1.001, 1.034) and by a factor of 0.977 [95% CI: 0.956, 0.998]) for respiratory mortality among the elderly for NO2. During the study period, abatement strategies targeting a 20% lower overall mean would have prevented four times more cases than abating days exceeding daily standards., Conclusion: During the last decade, the short term effects of PM10 and NO2 on hospitalizations and mortality in Switzerland have almost not changed. More ambitious strategies of air pollutant reduction in Switzerland would have had non negligible public health benefits., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Laboratory-validated data on the survival, development and hatching responses of fertilized Pacific cod Gadus macrocephalus eggs from the northern Japan stock were determined through an incubation experiment. The optimum temperature for survival until hatching ranged from 4 to 8°C. No significant difference in development rates was found between the populations from Mutsu Bay, Japan, and western Canadian coastal waters even though the samples may belong to different G. macrocephalus stocks. Gadus macrocephalus larvae hatched asynchronously from egg batches despite incubation under the same environment during their development. Both incubation temperature and temperature-mediated hatch rank affect size and yolk reserve. These data suggest that variations in water temperatures within an ecological range markedly influence the development rates, survival and hatching of the eggs, as well as the stage at hatch larvae of G. macrocephalus. Asynchronous hatching and the production of offspring with variable sizes and yolk reserves are considered evolutionary bet-hedging strategies that enable the species to maximize their likelihood of survival in an environment with variable temperatures., (© 2013 The Fisheries Society of the British Isles.)

Numerous studies of populations living in areas with good air quality have reported correlations between daily average levels of ambient particulate matter (PM) and daily mortality rates. These associations persist at PM levels below current air quality standards and are difficult to reconcile with the toxicology of PM chemical constituents. The unusual level of lethality per unit PM mass predicted by these associations may result from confounding by unmeasured societal, behavioral, or stress factors. Daily average ambient PM levels may be expected to correlate with societal activity level, because a working population increases PM emissions through increased manufacture, power utilization, construction, demolition, farming, and travel. Also, people's perceived and actual health depend on societal and psychological factors. A stress such as anger strongly increases the risk of death due to heart attack. Societal factors modify mortality as shown by calendar-related changes in mortality that are unrelated to air quality. Cardiovascular and respiratory mortality are correlated to day of the week, end of the month, and to the first week of the year. There is likely a role of such nontoxicologic variables in the PM associations, and without vigorously testing if other variables correlate as well as PM, we may erroneously conclude that reducing already low levels of PM will yield real public health benefits.