The Beijing Olympics will be the world's premier sporting event in 2008. Countries should begin planning for appropriate support for their Olympic athletes. Experienced medical staff should be appointed early and become familiar with the major medical or injury concerns of athletes and officials. Teams should assemble a comprehensive medical kit. Appropriate medical advice can ensure that athle...

A large scale study was conducted to elucidate the true relationship among entomological, epidemiological and environmental factors that contributed to dengue outbreak in Malaysia. Two large areas (Selayang and Bandar Baru Bangi) were selected in this study based on five consecutive years of high dengue cases. Entomological data were collected using ovitraps where the number of larvae was used ...

The relationship between satellites observed aerosol optical depth to PM2.5 at surface is important to monitor and quantify the air pollution at ground from satellite observations which is relatively more independent and has less artificial errors than groundbased measurements. However, the physical connection between AOD and PM2.5 is relatively indirect and weak thus can be affected by multipl...

Cirrus cloud occurrence as function of ambient relative humidity: A comparison of observations from the Southern and Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes obtained during the INCA experiment J. Ström, M. Seifert, B. Kärcher, J. Ovarlez, A. Minikin, J. F. Gayet, R. Krejci, A. Petzold, F. Auriol, R. Busen, U. Schumann, W. Haag, and H. C. Hansson ITM, Air Pollution Laboratory, Stockholm University, Swe...

The relationship between satellites observed aerosol optical depth to PM2.5 at surface is important to monitor and quantify the air pollution at ground from satellite observations which is relatively more independent and has less artificial errors than groundbased measurements. However, the physical connection between AOD and PM2.5 is relatively indirect and weak thus can be affected by multipl...

The authors assessed the acute association between particulate air pollution and mortality among subjects suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by using a case-crossover analysis. This design avoided the common concerns about the methods used to assess the acute effects of air pollution. The 1,845 men and the 460 women included were residents of Barcelona, Spain, who were over ag...

[1] Greenhouse gases and particle soot have been linked to enhanced sea-level, snowmelt, disease, heat stress, severe weather, and ocean acidification, but the effect of carbon dioxide (CO2) on air pollution mortality has not been examined or quantified. Here, it is shown that increased water vapor and temperatures from higher CO2 separately increase ozone more with higher ozone; thus, global w...

Sandrah P. Eckel Thomas A. Louis Department of Biostatistics, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, 615 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, U.S.A. Summary. Studies of the health effects of air pollution such as the National Morbidity and Mortality Air Pollution Study (NMMAPS) relate changes in daily pollution to daily deaths in a sample of cities and calendar years. Generally...

Air pollution is a significant risk factor for a number of health conditions including respiratory infections, heart disease like stroke and lung cancer. Further, air pollution exposure is a risk factor correlating with increased total mortality from cardiovascular events and Lung disease such as chronic bronchitis and emphysema. A severe health issue is on the other hand constituted by high le...

The prevalence of allergic rhinitis, a common respiratory disorder, may be rapidly increasing. Epidemiological studies, however, indicate little about its association with climatic factors and air pollution. The relationship between traffic-related air pollutants and allergic rhinitis in middle-school students was therefore investigated. In a nationwide survey of middle-school students in Taiwa...