Short-Term Exposure to Ambient Air Pollution and Increased Emergency Room Visits for Skin Diseases in Beijing, China

Skin diseases have become a global concern. This study aims to evaluate the associations between ambient air pollution and emergency room visits for skin diseases under the background of improving air quality in China. Based on 45,094 cases from a general hospital and fixed-site monitoring environmental data from 2014–2019 in Beijing, China, this study used generalized additive models with quasi-Poisson regression to estimate the exposure–health associations at lag 0–1 to lag 0–7. PM(2.5) and NO(2) exposure were associated with increased emergency room visits for total skin diseases (ICD10: L00-L99). Positive associations of PM(2.5), PM(10), O(3) and NO(2) with dermatitis/eczema (ICD-10: L20–30), as well as SO(2) and NO(2) with urticaria (ICD-10: L50) visits were also found. For instance, a 10 μg/m(3) increase in PM(2.5) was associated with increases of 0.7% (95%CI: 0.2%, 1.2%) in total skin diseases visits at lag 0–5 and 1.1% (95%CI: 0.6%, 1.7%) in dermatitis/eczema visits at lag 0–1, respectively. For PM(2.5), PM(10) and CO, stronger annual associations were typically observed in the high-pollution (2014) and low-pollution (2018/2019) years. For instance, a 10 μg/m(3) increase in PM(2.5) at lag 0–5 was associated with increases of 1.8% (95%CI: 1.0%, 2.6%) and 2.3% (95%CI: 0.4%, 4.3%) in total skin disease visits in 2014 and 2018, respectively. Our study emphasizes the necessity of controlling the potential health hazard of air pollutants on skin, although significant achievements in air quality control have been made in China.