Short-term effects of PM10 of Forest Fire on mortality in Southern Europe - Results of the MED-PARTICLES Project

Background. Increased mortality due to particulate matter (PM) from wild and anthropogenic fires has been reported, but results are inconsistent. Identifying PM from wild fires remains a difficult task and in southern Europe, fires are likely to occur in summer, during Saharan episodes. Aim. To estimate the short-term effects of PM from forest fires on mortality in multiple Euro-Mediterranean cities, within the MED-PARTICLES project. Methods. Daily counts of cause-specific deaths were collected for 10 cities from Italy, Spain, Greece and France, within 2001-2010. Data of PM10 (PM<10 µm) and PM2.5 (<2.5 µm) were available on daily mean concentrations. Forest fires days were identified using satellite data (from Naval Research Laboratory) in 3-5-year-period per city. City-specific over-dispersed Poisson regression models were fit, followed by random-effects meta-analysis. Results. The frequency of forest fires days (total n = 321) ranged between 6% in Thessaloniki and 1% in Northern Italy and Marseille; the...