Assessing the Potential Impact of Climate Change on Mortality for the Greater Boston Area

摘要

Rising temperatures associated with climate change are expected to impact human adaptive responses, including changes to home cooling and ventilation patterns. These changes in turn will alter the contributions of outdoor fine particulate matter (PM2.5) sources to indoor air quality, and subsequently lead to differential effects of PM2.5 exposures on human health. Therefore, the objective of this study was to examine the impact of climate change-related differences in exposures to indoor particle of outdoor origin on PM2.5-related mortality. We gathered all-cause non-accidental daily mortality data in the greater Boston area for the years 2000-2009 as the health outcome in the epidemiologic modeling. We used a negative binomial model to assess the association between the same day indoor PM2.5 concentration and total mortality, adjusted for long-term trend and ambient temperature through smoothing splines, as well as seasons using indicator variables for the past period. For the future climate change scenario, we used the health model to predict the daily total mortality under the climate of for 2056-2065. A strong, positive relationship was found between indoor PM2.5 concentration and total mortality, whereas a U-shaped relationship was seen for ambient temperature with higher mortality for colder months, followed by high temperature range. Under the future climate, there was an increase in indoor PM2.5 concentrations in warmer seasons, ranging from late spring (May) to mid-autumn (October). Overall, a similar trend was found for monthly averaged total mortality, with up to 3.6% and 3.7% increase in May and September, respectively. On the contrary, increase in temperature showed an overall protective effect (1.6 - 4.4% decrease) on mortality for colder months (January to April). Our findings suggest different adaptation strategies should be considered for colder and warmer months, respectively, to protect population health under the future climate change scenario.