Health and economic impacts of ambient air pollution on hospital admissions for overall and specific cardiovascular diseases in Panzhihua, Southwestern China

The associations of ambient air pollution with hospital admissions (HAs) for overall and specific causes of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), as well as related morbidity and economic burdens remain understudied, especially in low-pollution areas of low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We evaluated the short-term effects of exposure to PMWe used a generalized additive model (GAM) while controlling for time trends, meteorological conditions, holidays, and days of the week to estimate the associations. The cost of illness (COI) method was adopted to further assess corresponding hospitalization costs and productivity losses.A total of 27 660 HAs for CVDs were included in this study. PMOur results suggest that PM