The impact of the synergistic effect of SO2 and PM2.5/PM10 on obstructive lung disease in subtropical Taiwan

Background Chronic Obstructive lung diseases (COPD) are complex conditions influenced by various environmental, lifestyle , and genetic factors. Ambient air pollution has been identified as a potential risk factor, causing 4.2 million deaths worldwide in 2016, accounting for 25% of all COPD-related deaths and 26% of all respiratory infection-related deaths. This study aims to evaluate the associations among chronic lung diseases, air pollution, and meteorological factors. Methods This cross-sectional study obtained data from the Taiwan Biobank and Taiwan Air Quality Monitoring Database. We defined obstructive lung disease as patients with FEV1/FVC < 70%. Descriptive analysis between spirometry groups was performed using one-way ANOVA and the chi-square or Fisher’s exact test. A generalized additive model (GAM) was used to evaluate the relationship between SO 2 and PM 2.5 /PM 10 through equations and splines fitting. Results A total of 2,635 participants were enrolled. Regarding environmental factors, higher temperature, higher relative humidity, and lower rainfall were risk factors for obstructive lung disease. SO 2 was positively correlated with PM 10 and PM 2.5 , with correlation coefficients of 0.53 ( p < 0.0001) and 0.52 (p < 0.0001), respectively. Additionally, SO 2 modified the relative risk of obstructive impairment for both PM 10 [ β coefficient ( β ) = 0.01, p = 0.0052] and PM 2.5 ( β = 0.01, p = 0.0155). Further analysis per standard deviation (per SD) increase revealed that SO 2 also modified the relationship for both PM 10 ( β = 0.11, p = 0.0052) and PM 2.5 ( β = 0.09, p = 0.0155). Our GAM analysis showed a quadratic pattern for SO 2 (per SD) and PM 10 (per SD) in model 1, and a quadratic pattern for SO 2 (per SD) in model 2. Moreover, our findings confirmed synergistic effects among temperature, SO 2 and PM 2.5 /PM 10 , as demonstrated by the significant associations of bivariate (SO 2 vs. PM 10 , SO 2 vs. PM 2.5 ) thin-plate smoothing splines in models 1 and 2 with obstructive ...