Association Between the Ambient Fine Particulate Pollution and the Daily Internal Medicine Outpatient Visits in Zhoushan, China: A Time-Series Study

Background: There has been a recent worsening of air pollution in China, which poses a huge threat to public health by inducing and promoting circulatory and respiratory diseases. This study aimed to explore the association between the concentration of air pollution and daily internal medicine outpatient visits registered for the treatment of circulatory and respiratory symptoms in Zhoushan, China using a time-series method. Methods: We validated and acquired the daily internal medicine outpatient visits records between January 1, 2014, and December 31, 2019, from the Zhoushan Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Zhejiang, China. Further, we collected the daily average records of the ambient air pollutants from the Zhoushan Environmental Monitoring Centre within the same duration. A generalized additive model with the natural splines was constructed to explore the association between the ambient air pollutants and daily internal medicine outpatient visits. Further, we conducted a lag analysis by using the distributed lag non-linear model to estimate the time-delayed effects of the air pollutants on the daily internal medicine outpatient visits. Results: A total of 2,190,258 daily internal medicine outpatient visits with a mean of 202.4 visits per day were recorded. The non-linear relationships were found among particulate matter(2.5) (PM(2.5)), sulfur dioxide (SO(2)), and the daily internal medicine outpatient visits. Overall, PM(2.5) was positively correlated with the daily internal medicine outpatient visits. Both ozone (O(3)) and SO(2) had significant delayed effects on the daily internal medical outpatient numbers; however, PM(2.5) only showed a short-term risk. Conclusion: Short-term exposure to PM(2.5) was associated with an increase in the daily internal medicine outpatient visits for circulatory and respiratory diseases/symptoms in Zhoushan, China. SO(2) and O(3) were shown to induce significant effects after a concentration-dependent time lag.