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Contribution of climate and air pollution to variation in coronary heart disease mortality rates in England

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posted on 2012-03-01, 00:00 authored by P Scarborough, Steven AllenderSteven Allender, M Rayner, M Goldacre
There are substantial geographic variations in coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality rates in England that may in part be due to differences in climate and air pollution. An ecological cross-sectional multi-level analysis of male and female CHD mortality rates in all wards in England (1999–2004) was conducted to estimate the relative strength of the association between CHD mortality rates and three aspects of the physical environment - temperature, hours of sunshine and air quality. Models were adjusted for deprivation, an index measuring the healthiness of the lifestyle of populations, and urbanicity. In the fully adjusted model, air quality was not significantly associated with CHD mortality rates, but temperature and sunshine were both significantly negatively associated (p<0.05), suggesting that CHD mortality rates were higher in areas with lower average temperature and hours of sunshine. After adjustment for the unhealthy lifestyle of populations and deprivation, the climate variables explained at least 15% of large scale variation in CHD mortality rates. The results suggest that the climate has a small but significant independent association with CHD mortality rates in England.

History

Journal

Plos One

Volume

7

Pagination

1 - 6

Location

San Francisco, Calif.

Open access

  • Yes

ISSN

1932-6203

Language

eng

Notes

This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2012 Scarborough et al.

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