Modelagem da influência de poluentes atmosféricos veiculares e fatores meteorológicos em afecções respiratórias

Abstract

Until late 1980s, urban air pollution was attributed to industrial emissions. However, the fast urban growth in the developing nations caused the vehicles to become an issue of large magnitude. Nowadays, there is a situation in which the most responsible for the a relevant part of the air quality degradation in the bigger urban centers are the motor vehicles that are currently circulating on the roads, due to their great amount and poor state of repair. In some cities, the air pollutant concentration indexes have reached levels that threaten people's health, forcing the authorities to make decisions to control such problem. This current work aimed to verify the relationship among meteorological factors, vehicular air pollutants and the number of respiratory system disease cases notified by the department of health of Salvador-BA', by using the Poisson Regression Model. This investigation was conducted by using an ecological drawing made from secondary information about hospitalizations, collected from DATASUS and from data related to the monitoring of major air pollutants and to the meteorological parameters, from November 2010 to September 2012, acquired from the Environment and Water Resources Institute - INEMA. In this work, the most susceptible groups of people, that is, children (≤9 years old) and the elderly ( ≥65 years-old), were monitored. Acording to the achieved results, it was observed that the independent variables "SO2", "NO2", "CO" and "Temperature" were statistically relevant to justify the variability of the responds variable "Hospitalizations by respiratory system diseases" in children, to the exploratory level of 5%. Regarding to elderly, only the variables "NO2" and "O3" were statistically relevant to the significance level of 5%. Through the residual graphics and the diagnostic measures related to the Poisson model adjusted to the data about hospitalizations caused by respiratory system diseases in children and the elderly, it was possible to verify the proper suitability of the model used for the decision-making.