Environmental science and pollution research international
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Environ Sci Pollut Res Int · Oct 2021
Increasing mortality caused by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in relation with exposure to ambient fine particulate matters: an analysis in Southeastern China.
The objective of this study was to investigate the association between ambient particulate matters (PMs) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) mortality. generalized additive mixed model was employed to investigate the effects of ambient fine and coarse PMs on COPD mortality using 13,066 deaths from 2014 to 2016 among six cities in Zhejiang Province in Southeastern China. The daily average death count due to COPD was 3, varying from 1 to 7 among six cities. ⋯ The analysis showed that daily exposure to PM2.5 and PM10 was associated with increased mortality due to COPD and that weak effects were observed between PM2.5-10 and COPD mortality. Our results provided solid evidence that the fine particles in air pollution have stronger functions on adverse health effects other than coarser particles in Southeastern China, which may be considered as a potential clinic target in PM-associated COPD.
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Environ Sci Pollut Res Int · Aug 2021
ReviewArtificial intelligence as a fundamental tool in management of infectious diseases and its current implementation in COVID-19 pandemic.
The world has never been prepared for global pandemics like the COVID-19, currently posing an immense threat to the public and consistent pressure on the global healthcare systems to navigate optimized tools, equipments, medicines, and techno-driven approaches to retard the infection spread. The synergized outcome of artificial intelligence paradigms and human-driven control measures elicit a significant impact on screening, analysis, prediction, and tracking the currently infected individuals, and likely the future patients, with precision and accuracy, generating regular international and national data on confirmed, recovered, and death cases, as the current status of 3,820,869 infected patients worldwide. ⋯ The review tends to elaborate the role of industry 4.0 technology, fast diagnostic procedures, and convolutional neural networks, as artificial intelligence aspects, in potentiating the COVID-19 management criteria and differentiating infection in SARS-CoV-2 positive and negative groups. Therefore, the review successfully supplements the processes of vaccine development, disease management, diagnosis, patient records, transmission inhibition, social distancing, and future pandemic predictions, with artificial intelligence revolution and smart techno processes to ensure that the human race wins this battle with COVID-19 and many more combats in the future.
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Environ Sci Pollut Res Int · Jun 2021
Effect of ambient air pollution on tuberculosis risks and mortality in Shandong, China: a multi-city modeling study of the short- and long-term effects of pollutants.
Few studies conducted in China have assessed the effects of ambient air pollution exposure on tuberculosis (TB) risk and mortality, especially with a multicity setting. We evaluated the effect of short- and long-term ambient sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), and particulate matter≤2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5) exposures on development and mortality of active TB in 7 Chinese cities in Shandong province from January 1, 2013, to December 31, 2017. We estimated the pollution-associated risk to new infection TB, recurrent TB, and mortality in relation to 1-μg/m3 increases in air pollutants using the penalized multivariate Poisson regression models. ⋯ We estimated an increase of 1.33% (95% CI 1.29%, 1.37%) and 3.04% (95% CI 2.98%, 3.11%) in new infection TB count for each 1-μg/m3 increase of SO2 at lag 0-180 days and PM2.5 at lag 0-365 days, respectively. This epidemiologic study in China shows that air pollution exposure is associated with increased risk of active TB development and mortality. The control of ambient air pollution may benefit the control and decrease the mortality of TB disease.
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Environ Sci Pollut Res Int · Apr 2021
EditorialCOVID-19 pandemic: the possible influence of the long-term ignorance about climate change.
In addressing the current COVID-19 pandemic and evaluating the measures taken by global leaders so far, it is crucial to trace back the circumstances influencing the emergence of the crisis that the world is presently facing. Could it be that the failure to act in a timely manner dates way back to when first concerns about climate change and its inevitable threat to human health came up? Multiple lines of evidence suggest that the large-scale and rapid environmental changes in the last few decades may be implicated in the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic by increasing the potential risk of the occurrence and the spread of zoonotic diseases, worsening food security, and weakening the human immune system. As we are facing progressive climatic change, a failure to act accordingly could inevitably lead to further, more frequent confrontations with newly emerging diseases.
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Environ Sci Pollut Res Int · Apr 2021
Evaluating the sustainability of big data centers using the analytic network process and fuzzy TOPSIS.
The big data revolution has created data center sustainability problems, whose solutions require the consideration of environmental factors. The purpose of this study is to establish a big data center sustainability evaluation index and provide guidance for sustainable data center construction. This research formulated a big data center sustainability evaluation model that integrates multiple-criteria decision-making methods based on the analytic network process and fuzzy technique for order preference by similarity to an ideal solution (TOPSIS). ⋯ Big data is new oil, but it is not clean oil. It is both a vital driver of economic growth and a source of environmental damage. We need to ensure that big data centers are run in a sustainable way.