Pollution Conditions Of Atmospheric Particulates And Its Relationship With Upper Respiratory Tract Infections In Nanjing,China

To understand the pollution conditions of atmospheric particles in Nanjing city and analyze its relationship with disease, atmospheric particulate matters, online monitoring data of air pollutants, together with meteorological data, were collected in Nanjing during 2014-2015. Besides of the pollution characteristics of the sampled atmospheric particulates, radio nuclides were analyzed by using a high-purity germanium y spectrometer. The associations between atmospheric pollutants and outpatients of upper respiratory tract infection were analyzed, combined with the disease data origined from the Hospital of Nanjing University of Science and Technology (NJUST). The main conclusions are as follows:(1) During the research period, the annual concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 of the six national monitoring points in Nanjing and the sampling point in the NJUST campus exceeded the national standards by 0.18～0.53 and 0.43～1.26 times, the daily average concentrations exceeded 18% and 8%, respectively. Daily change of the concentrations of PM2.5 and PM10 appeared double peaks diagram, and the concentrations were highest in January, lowest in July and August. The order of the particulate concentration of each season was:winter> autumn>spring>summer.(2) There existed positive correlations between particulates (PM2.5, PMio) and gas pollutents (CO, NO2, SO2), and the correlation coefficients had differences in different seasons, which showed that the source included automobile exhaust, coal and chemical plant emissions. Among the meteorological factors, the temperature, precipitation and wind were negatively correlated with PM2.5 and PM10 concentrations. Relative humidity were negatively correlated with PM10 and positively correlated with PM2.5, but not significant. The maximum concentration of PM2.5 appeared when the relative humidity was 70%-80%.(3) The atmospheric particulate matter contains mainly 6 kinds of radionuclides, the concentration of which had a distribution characteristic as Ba-131>1-133>K-40>Bi-214> Pb-214>U-235. The concentrations of radionuclides were lower when raining, which indicated that the rainfall had a certain wet removel effect on the radioactive radionuclides. The concentration of radionuclides was relatively higher when the particulate matter pollution was serious.(4) The total number of patients of upper respiratory tract infection during the study period were 26916, the ratio of male to female was 1.65:1, and the ratio of age (less than 65 years old and older than 65 years) was 7.67:1, the number of outpatients showed a certain seasonal and weekly effect. The outpatients were significantly positively correlated with air pollutants, and negatively correlated with the temperature and relative humidity significantly. Overall, male and people less than 65 years were more sensitive to air pollutants than female and people older than 65 years.