Increasing experimental evidence has suggested air pollution as new risk factor for neurological disease. Although long-term exposure is reportedly related to neurological disease, information on association with short-term exposure is scarce. We examined the association of short-term exposure to particles <2.5 μm (PM_2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), ozone (O₃), and carbon monoxide (CO) with PD aggravation in Seoul from the National Health Insurance Service–National Sample Cohort, Korea during 2002–2013. PD aggravation cases were defined as emergency hospital admissions for primarily diagnosed PD and analyzed with a case-crossover analysis, designed for rare acute outcomes. Pollutants concentrations on case and control days were compared and effect modifications were explored. A unit increase in 8-day moving average of concentrations was significantly associated with PD aggravation. The association was consistent for PM_2.5(odds ratio [95% confidence interval]: 1.61 [1.14–2.29] per 10 μg/m³), NO₂(2.35 [1.39–3.97] per 10 ppb), SO₂(1.54 [1.11–2.14] per 1 ppb), and CO (1.46 [1.05–2.04] per 0.1 ppm). The associations were stronger in women, patients aged 65–74 years, and cold season, but not significant. In conclusion, short-term air pollution exposure increased risk of PD aggravation, and may cause neurological disease progression in humans.

Heatwaves are commonly simplified as binary variables in epidemiological studies, limiting the understanding of heatwave-mortality associations. Here we conduct a multi-country study across 28 East Asian cities that employed the Cumulative Excess Heatwave Index (CEHWI), which represents excess heat accumulation during heatwaves, to explore the potentially nonlinear associations of daytime-only, nighttime-only, and day-night compound heatwaves with mortality from 1981 to 2010. Populations exhibited high adaptability to daytime-only and nighttime-only heatwaves, with non-accidental mortality risks increasing only at higher CEHWI levels (75th–90th percentiles). In contrast, compound heatwaves posed a super-linear increase in mortality risks after the 25th percentile of CEHWI. Associations of heatwaves with cardiovascular mortality mirrored those with non-accidental mortality but were more pronounced at higher CEHWI levels, while significant associations with respiratory mortality emerged at low-to-moderate CEHWI levels. These results highlight the necessity of considering the nonlinear health responses to heatwaves of different types in disease burden assessments and heatwave-health warning systems amid climate change.

Climate change mitigation efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have associated costs, but there are also potential benefits from improved air quality, such as public health improvements and the associated cost savings. A multidisciplinary modeling approach can better assess the co-benefits from climate mitigation for human health and provide a justifiable basis for establishment of adequate climate change mitigation policies and public health actions. An integrated research framework was adopted by combining a computable general equilibrium model, an air quality model, and a health impact assessment model, to explore the long-term economic impacts of climate change mitigation in South Korea through 2050. Mitigation costs were further compared with health-related economic benefits under different socioeconomic and climate change mitigation scenarios. Achieving ambitious targets (i.e., stabilization of the radiative forcing level at 3.4 W/m2) would cost 1.3-8.5 billion USD in 2050, depending on varying carbon prices from different integrated assessment models. By contrast, achieving these same targets would reduce costs by 23 billion USD from the valuation of avoided premature mortality, 0.14 billion USD from health expenditures, and 0.38 billion USD from reduced lost work hours, demonstrating that health benefits alone noticeably offset the costs of cutting GHG emissions in South Korea.