Relating air Pollution and Respiratory Diseases Occurrences

Abstract

In this article we study the impact of air pollution on children's health in Portugal. In particular, we focus our attention on the city of Barreiro. We use the general linear methods (GLM), taking advantage of all the ease of handling and analyzing data in order to relate air quality and health. We relate levels of air pollution and incidence of entries from children with symptoms of respiratory problems in the pediatric urgency service at the hospital of Barreiro. It was not easy to obtain clear and unambiguous relations in particle dispersion, air quality and health. A set of models are estimated by GLM and validated using adequate tests and residual analysis. At the end of this process, we combine the best models. The work is still going on.