Identification of Regional Air Pollution Characteristic and the Correlation with Public Health in Taiwan

This study aims to classify regions with different air pollution characteristics into groups in Taiwan, and further to evaluate and compare the air quality of various groups. A selected multivariate analysis technique, cluster analysis, is applied to the pollution monitoring dataset which including PM(10), SO(2), NO(2), CO and O(3). The obtained results have proved that the regions with similar air pollution characteristic can be appropriately grouped by applying cluster analysis. All 22 regions are classified into six groups, and the pollution pattern for each group is characterized as: Group 1 (high SO(2)/NO(2); low PM(10)), Group 2 (high PM(10)), Group 3 (high SO(2)/PM(10)), Group 4 (low SO(2)/NO(2)/CO; high O(3)), Group 5 (low CO/NO(2); high O(3)) and Group 6 (low PM(10)/SO(2)/NO(2)/O(3)/CO). Results from air quality evaluation indicate that the regions in group 6 (Ilan, Hualien and Taitung) have the best air quality while the regions in group 3 (Kaohsiung and Kaohsiung City) have the worst air quality in Taiwan. The results from correlation analysis reveal that incidence of the respiratory system disease is significantly positively correlated with pollution of NO(2) and CO at 99% confidence level.