{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.04185022026431718, 'fraction_numerical': 0.043502202643171804, 'mean_word_length': 5.180272108843537, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 1, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Effects of air pollution on all cause neonatal and post-neonatal mortality: population-based study

Background: Although air pollution is associated with infant mortality, it is unclear if it differentially affects all cause neonatal or infant mortality. Aims and Objectives: To investigate the effects of air pollution on mortality. Methods: We separately investigated associations of pollution exposures of particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ≤10µm (PM10), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2) with all cause infant, neonatal and post-neonatal mortality in 7,984,366 live births between 2001-2012 in England and Wales, adjusting for confounders (deprivation, birthweight, maternal age, sex and multiple births). Each pollutant was banded into quintiles by ranking scores for each pollutant over each LSOA and for each year for each pollutant individually. Results: When lowest pollution exposure quintile was used as the reference, increasing exposure to all pollutants resulted in increased deaths with highest exposure quintile resulting in odds ratios of 1.24 to 1.43 for infant deaths, 1.21 to 1.38 for neonatal deaths and 1.32 to 1.54 for post-neonatal deaths. The results decreased after adjustments for confounders - ORs for infant deaths were significantly increased for NO2, PM10 and SO2 (1.07, 1.04, 1.19). Neonatal death was significantly associated with SO2 (1.21) but non-significantly with NO2 and PM10 (1.04, 1.01). All pollutants were associated with post-neonatal deaths (1.11, 1.12, 1.15) albeit at different effects. Conclusion: NO2, PM10 and SO2 are differentially associated with all cause infant, neonatal and post-neonatal mortality with SO2 possibly acting via the mother leading to neonatal mortality and all three acting directly resulting in post-neonatal mortality.