PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - B Forsberg
AU  - N Stjernberg
AU  - M Falk
AU  - B Lundback
AU  - S Wall
TI  - Air pollution levels, meteorological conditions and asthma symptoms
AID  - 10.1183/09031936.93.06081109
DP  - 1993 Sep 01
TA  - European Respiratory Journal
PG  - 1109--1115
VI  - 6
IP  - 8
4099  - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/6/8/1109.short
4100  - http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/6/8/1109.full
SO  - Eur Respir J1993 Sep 01; 6
AB  - We wanted to assess relations between the daily occurrence of asthma symptoms and fluctuations of air pollution concentrations and meteorological conditions. In a panel of 31 asthmatic patients residing in the town of Pitea in northern Sweden, severe symptoms of shortness of breath, wheeze, cough and phlegm were recorded in an asthma diary together with suspected causes. Sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, black smoke, relative humidity and temperature were used to evaluate the relationship to the environment. By using multivariate analyses, we found that daily variations in the particulate pollution levels, indicated by black smoke levels below the criteria limits, had significant effects on the risk of developing severe symptoms of shortness of breath. This association was stronger among 10 subjects, who had at least five incident days with severe shortness of breath. Meteorological conditions were not significant in the multivariate models. Cough and phlegm did not show significant relationships to any environmental condition that was evaluated. Only one-third of the subjects reported, at least once during the study, symptoms believed to be related to air pollutants, although we found significant correlations between the pollution levels and the frequency of pollution-related symptoms. We conclude that an association has been established for black smoke as pollutant and shortness of breath as respiratory symptom, and that in certain asthmatics, effects were occurring at lower particulate levels than suggested previously.