Air pollution and risk of respiratory and cardiovascular hospitalizations in the most populous city in Vietnam
Air pollution has become an alarming issue inVietnamrecently; however, therewas only one study so far on the effects of ambient air pollution on population health. Our study aimed to investigate the short-term effects of air pollutants including PM10,NO2,SO2,andO3on respiratory and cardiovascular hospitalizations in Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), the largest city in Vietnam. Data on hospitalization from the two largest hospitals in HCMC and daily records of PM10,NO2,SO2,O3and meteorological data were collected from February 2004 to December 2007. A time-series regression analysiswithdistributed lagmodelwas applied for data analysis. Changes in levels of NO2and PM10were strongly associated with hospital admissions for both respiratory and cardiovascular dis-eases (CVD); whereas levels of SO2were only moderately associated with respiratory and CVD hospital admis-sions and O3concentration was not associated with any of them. For a 10μg/m 3 increase of each air pollutant, the risk of...