Life-GAP results at Nordic Lung Congress in Copenhagen
The 50th Nordic Lung Congress was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, 1st to 3rd June 2022. Among the presenters were PhD researcher Shanshan Xu from Life-GAP with exciting new results on long-term air pollution and greenness exposures in Northern Europe.
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PhD researcher Shanshan Xu presented results from the Life-GAP project at the Nordic Lung Congress in June. Xu started in Life-GAP in September 2021 and will in her PhD project focus on long-term exposures of air pollution and greenness, and how these exposures affect outcomes such as mortality, hospitalisations and symptom burden.
In a poster presentation, Xu showed the development of several air pollutants over a 20-year period in the Nordic cities included in the Respiratory Health in Northern Europe (RHINE) study. In the period from 1990 to 2010, pollution from particle matters (PM) have been reduced in five cities (Aarhus, Umeå, Gothenburg, Uppsala), but show a tendency for increase in Bergen and Reykjavik. Also levels of black carbon (BC) and nitrogen dioxide (NO2) show a similar pattern.
Preliminary analyses further showed that increased air pollution levels are associated with increased risk for all-cause mortality in adults, and that the increased mortality risk may differ between men and women. These results will be further investigated for Shanshan Xu’s next presentation, which will take place at the world’s largest congress for pulmonary research - European Respiratory Society – in Barcelona in September.
