The Effect of Asian Dust in Estimating the Mortality Effects of Ambient Particles, with Larger Dataset in Seoul, Korea from 1998 to 2015

Background: Asian Dust (AD) is a natural source of particulate matter (PM) in Korea and increase the concentration of PM remarkably. However, the characteristics of PM from AD differ from that of PM in usual days.Objectives: We investigated the effects of Asian dust in association between PM and mortality in Seoul, Korea, 1998-2015.Methods: We applied time-stratified case-crossover design to estimate the effects of PM10 and PM2.5 on non-accidental, cardiovascular and respiratory mortality. The effect estimates of PM were compared for all days in study period and days without AD events, with stratified analyses by sex and age group.Results: A 10 μg/m3 increase in PM10 and PM2.5 was associated with a 0.15% (95% CI: 0.06, 0.24%) and 0.27% (95% CI: 0.07, 0.47%) increase in risk of non-accidental mortality, respectively, for all days. The associations were enlarged to 0.30% (95% CI: 0.18, 0.42%) and 0.33% (95% CI: 0.10, 0.55%) when AD days were excluded from the analyses. The difference in effect estimate...