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Link Shown Between Thunderstorms and Asthma Attacks in Metro Atlanta Area by Team of Researchers from University of Georgia and Emory University
7/23/08 (2:00 p.m.) In the first in-depth study of its kind ever done in the
Southeastern United States, researchers at the University of Georgia and Emory
University have discovered a link between thunderstorms and asthma attacks in
the metro Atlanta area that could have a “significant public health impact.”
While a relationship between thunderstorms and increased
hospital visits for asthma attacks has been known and studied worldwide for
years, this is the first time a team of climatologists and epidemiologists has
ever conducted a detailed study of the phenomenon in the American South.
The team, studying a database consisting of more than 10
million emergency room visits in some 41 hospitals in a 20-county area in and
around Atlanta for the period between 1993 and 2004, found a three percent
higher incidence of visits for asthma attacks on days following thunderstorms.
“While a three percent increase in risk may seem modest, asthma
is quite prevalent in Atlanta, and a modest relative increase could have a
significant public health impact for a region with more than five million
people,” said Andrew Grundstein, a climatologist in the department of
geography at UGA and lead author on the research. Grundstein went on to say
that “three percent is likely conservative because of limitations in this
study.”
The next step for the UGA and Emory team will be, for the first
time, to apply Doppler radar, modeling and observational data to the
“thunderstorm asthma” problem based on what Grundstein calls an intriguing
initial finding. He points out that “radar data coupled with the metro Atlanta
database will allow us to correlate thunderstorm-asthma interactions that we
are probably missing today.”
Paige Tolbert, professor and chair of the department of
environmental and occupational health in the Rollins School of Public Health
at Emory and a co-author of the just-published study, said the expertise of
the two universities came together strongly in studying the problem.
“The Emory team has experience with a comprehensive emergency
department database, and the UGA team can provide a much more refined
characterization of thunderstorms than was performed in the previous studies
of this question,” she said. “The study will thus provide new insight into the
mechanisms under the phenomenon of thunderstorm-induced asthma.”
The research was published in the online edition of the medical
journal Thorax. Other authors of the paper include: Marshall Shepherd and
Thomas Mote from the UGA department of geography; Luke Naeher from the UGA
department of environmental health science; and Stefanie Ebelt Sarnat and
Mitchell Klein, who along with Tolbert are from the department of
environmental and occupational health in the Rollins School of Public Health
at Emory.
About 20 million Americans have asthma, according to the
American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. There also has been a
dramatic increase in reported cases of the disease, with its prevalence
increasing 75 percent between 1980 and 1994. Some 5,000 Americans die annually
from asthma attacks.
Approximately 210,000 Georgia children under the age of 17 have
asthma, according to the Division of Public Health of the Georgia Department
of Human Resources. Some 65 percent of that number had an attack within the
last year.
While associations between thunderstorm activity and asthma
deaths and emergency room visits have been reported around the world,
virtually no studies have been done in the American South, where hundreds of
thousands suffer from asthma and thunderstorms are prevalent.
Some people may find it odd that thunderstorms, which
supposedly “clear the air” of pollen and pollutants, are implicated in asthma
attacks. The most prominent hypothesis as to why it happens, the authors of
the paper say, is that “pollen grains may rupture upon contact with rainwater,
releasing respirable allergens, and that gusty winds from thunderstorm
downdrafts spread particles... which may ultimately increase the risk of
asthma attacks.”
The team used thunderstorm occurrences from meteorological data
gathered at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and compared
that information with the vast database of emergency room visits to arrive at
the figure of a three percent increase in asthma-related emergency room visits
following thunderstorms for the study period.
In all, during the 11-year period, there were 564 thunderstorm
days, and in order to better understand the physical mechanisms that relate
thunderstorms and asthma, the team also mined the information on total daily
rainfall and maximum five-second wind gusts, which they used as “a surrogate
for thunderstorm downdrafts and to indicate the maximum wind speed of the
storm.”
In all, there were 215,832 asthma emergency room visits during
the period and 28,350 of these occurred on days following thunderstorms. While
the new study is the first of its kind in the South and does clearly indicate
a relationship between thunderstorms and asthma in the metro Atlanta area,
much more work remains, Grundstein said.
“Obtaining a better understanding of the mechanistic basis of the phenomenon of thunderstorm-induced asthma will allow for better intervention strategies and improved emergencies services planning,” said Stefanie Ebelt Sarnat of Emory. “This will be particularly important in the era of climate change.” Grundstein added that in the Atlanta area conditions favorable for an estimated doubling of severe thunderstorms are expected within this century.
By Philip Lee Williams
University of Georgia
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