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[Air pollution and respiratory diseases among children in the city of Curitiba, Brazil].

OBJECTIVE
To assess the effects of air pollution levels on respiratory morbidity among children from 1999 to 2000.


METHODS
Daily records of health center attendance due to respiratory diseases among children were obtained from the public health system in Curitiba, State of Paraná, Brazil. Daily levels of particulate matter (PM10), smoke, NO2 and O3 were obtained from both Paraná State Environmental Institute and the Development Technology Institute, a non-governmental agency. Daily measurements of temperature and relative humidity were obtained from the National Institute of Meteorology. Generalized additive Poisson regression models were used to assess the relationship between respiratory diseases and air pollution, controlling for long-term seasonality using loess (a non-parametric smoothing function), weather and weekdays. A significance level of 5% was adopted in all the analyses.


RESULTS
All pollutants presented an effect on respiratory diseases among children. An increase of 40.4 mg/m3 in the 3-day moving average of smoke was associated with an increase of 4.5% (95% CI: 1.5-7.6) in the attendance of children with respiratory diseases.


CONCLUSION
The results suggest that air pollution promotes adverse effects on children's respiratory health even when pollutant levels are lower than the air quality standards.