Table 1.
Summary statistics for daily number of admissions, levels of air pollutants and meteorological factors in the 10-year period 1 Jan 1995–30 Dec 2004 (n = 3652 days).
| A. Daily number of hospital admissions for all, cardiovascular and respiratory causes | |||||||||
| Total number (% Nicosia residents)1 | Mean | SD | Min | 25% | Median | 75% | Max | ||
| All causes | 178 091 | 48.8 | 20.1 | 4 | 31 | 50 | 63 | 111 | |
| Cardiovascular2 | 10 896 (75%) | 3.0 (2.2) | 2.4 (1.9) | 0 (0) | 1 (1) | 3 (2) | 4 (3) | 22 (11) | |
| Respiratory2 | 14 827 (86%) | 4.1 (3.5) | 3.7 (3.1) | 0 (0) | 1 (1) | 3 (2) | 6 (5) | 20 (18) | |
| B. Levels of air pollutants, shown separately for cold and warm months3 | |||||||||
| Number of Days (% of total days)4 | Mean | SD | Min | 5% | Median | 95% | Max | ||
| Nicosia Central | |||||||||
| PM10 24-hour average (μg/m3) | Cold | 1553 (85.7%) | 57.6 | 52.5 | 5.0 | 20.0 | 50.8 | 103.0 | 1370.6 |
| Warm | 1664 (90.4%) | 53.4 | 30.7 | 18.4 | 32.0 | 50.5 | 77.6 | 933.5 | |
| O3 8-hour MA max (ppb) | Cold | 1514 (83.6%) | 28.7 | 12.6 | 3.7 | 9.9 | 27.5 | 50.2 | 63.6 |
| Warm | 1692 (92.0%) | 44.4 | 10.3 | 7.8 | 24.4 | 46.1 | 58.8 | 71.1 | |
| Ayia Marina5 | |||||||||
| PM10 24-hour average (μg/m3) | Cold | 918 (84.5%) | 25.9 | 28.0 | 6.3 | 9.3 | 19.0 | 62.3 | 553.2 |
| Warm | 903 (81.8%) | 35.7 | 40.5 | 8.1 | 16.0 | 30.9 | 58.9 | 952.4 | |
| O3 8-hour MA max (ppb) | Cold | 1155 (80.1%) | 45.7 | 6.8 | 30.2 | 35.1 | 44.6 | 58.4 | 71.0 |
| Warm | 1247 (84.7%) | 54.9 | 8.2 | 28.9 | 40.6 | 55.2 | 68.1 | 78.7 | |
| C. Meteorological factors | |||||||||
| Temperature | Cold | 1812 (100%) | 12.9 | 3.6 | 1.9 | 7.4 | 12.5 | 19.1 | 27.2 |
| Warm | 1840 (100%) | 25.8 | 3.9 | 11.8 | 19.0 | 26.3 | 31.4 | 35.5 | |
| Rel. Humidity | 3591 (98.3%) | 65.0 | 14.0 | 16.6 | 38.5 | 66.2 | 85.8 | 96.5 | |
| Dew Point | 3591 (98.3%) | 11.3 | 5.5 | -7.6 | 2.4 | 10.8 | 20.4 | 24.2 | |
Notes: 1 In the case of cause-specific admissions, information on residence was available allowing the analyses to be restricted to those resident in the Nicosia district; the same was not possible for all-cause admissions as only aggregated data were available. In parentheses, the proportion of Nicosia residents among total number of admissions. 2 Summary statistics when restricting numbers to Nicosia residents are shown in parentheses. 3 Cold months include Jan, Feb, Mar Apr, Nov and Dec, based on monthly average temperatures, while warm months include all the rest. 4 About 10% of the 3652 days in the 10-year study period were excluded as no data were available as well as an additional 2% of days for which only less than 12 hourly measurements were recorded. 5 PM10 and O3 data from the station of Ayia Marina were available only from 1999 and 1997 onwards reducing the study period to 6 and 8 years respectively.