Air pollution and mortality in the Netherlands: are the elderly more at risk?

The association between daily mortality and short-term variations in the ambient levels of ozone (O₃), black smoke (BS), sulphur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), carbon monoxide (CO) and particulate matter was studied in the Netherlands.

Daily total and cause-specific mortality counts (cardiovascular, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and pneumonia), air quality, temperature, relative humidity and influenza data were obtained from 1986–1994. The relationship between daily mortality and air pollution was modelled using Poisson regression analysis. All pollution mortality associations were adjusted for potential confounding due to long-term trends, seasonal trends, influenza epidemics, ambient temperature, ambient relative humidity, day of the week and holidays, using generalised additive models.

Statistically significant associations were mostly found in the elderly, that is the age categories of 65–74 and ≥75 yrs for the pollutants PM₁₀(particles with a 50% cut-off aerodynamic diameter of 10 µm), BS, SO₂, NO₂and CO. This may partly be due to a better precision of relative risk (RR) estimates for the larger numbers of deaths in these age groups. Significant associations for those <65 yrs were found for O₃(total and COPD mortality), PM₁₀(pneumonia), NO₂(pneumonia) and CO (pneumonia).

RR estimates for deaths between 45–65 yrs tended to be smaller than those in >65 yrs, with the exception of ozone; for cardiovascular mortality the RR for PM₁₀, O₃and CO were similar in these age groups.

In conclusion, larger relative risks for air pollution were mostly found in the elderly except for ozone and for death-cause pneumonia which showed larger relative risk in younger age groups.