Air Pollution Increases Influenza Hospitalizations

Gregor Singer; Joshua Graff Zivin; Matthew Neidell; Nicholas Sanders

Seasonal influenza is a global health threat, with an average of 3-5 million severe cases per year and 290,000 to 650,000 respiratory deaths (1, 2) . The disease exhibits variability in spread and severity across individuals, regions, and over time. Prior research has produced two broad sets of findings to explain this variation: a) meteorological factors that affect the spread of the virus, such as temperature, sunlight and humidity (3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) ; and b) individual level host factors, such as age, sex, underlying health and smoking that affect the intensity of symptoms (9, 10). We know considerably less, however, about how air pollution affects influenza spread and severity, a surprising gap given the pervasiveness of air pollution around the world and the well-established policy tools available to control it.