Effects of Personal Exposures to Micro- and Nano-Particulate Matter, Black Carbon, Particle-Bound Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, and Carbon Monoxide on Heart Rate Variability in a Panel of Healthy Older Subjects

Chin-Sheng Tang, Kai-Jen Chuang, Ta-Yuan Chang, Hsiao-Chi Chuang, Li-Hsin Chen, Shih-Chun Candice Lung and Li-Te Chang
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Chin-Sheng Tang: Department of Public Health, College of Medicine, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City 24205, Taiwan
Kai-Jen Chuang: School of Public Health, College of Public Health, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 11031, Taiwan
Ta-Yuan Chang: Department of Occupational Safety and Health, College of Public Health, China Medical University, Taichung 40402, Taiwan
Hsiao-Chi Chuang: School of Respiratory Therapy, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 11031, Taiwan
Li-Hsin Chen: Department of Public Health, College of Medicine, Fu Jen Catholic University, New Taipei City 24205, Taiwan
Shih-Chun Candice Lung: Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei 11529, Taiwan
Li-Te Chang: Department of Environmental Engineering and Science, Feng Chia University, Taichung 40724, Taiwan

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 23, 1-25

Abstract: As a non-invasive method, heart rate variability (HRV) has been widely used to study cardiovascular autonomous control. Environmental epidemiological studies indicated that the increase in an average concentration of particulate matter (PM) would result in a decrease in HRV, which was related to the increase of cardiovascular mortality in patients with myocardial infarction and the general population. With rapid economic and social development in Asia, how air pollutants, such as PM of different sizes and their components, affect the cardiovascular health of older people, still need to be further explored. The current study includes a 72 h personal exposure monitoring of seven healthy older people who lived in the Taipei metropolitan area. Mobile equipment, a portable electrocardiogram recorder, and the generalized additive mixed model (GAMM) were adopted to evaluate how HRV indices were affected by size-fractionated PM, particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons ( p -PAHs), black carbon (BC), and carbon monoxide (CO). Other related confounding factors, such as age, sex, body mass index (BMI), temperature, relative humidity (RH), time, and monitoring week were controlled by fixed effects of the GAMM. Statistical analyses of multi-pollutant models showed that PM 2.5–10 , PM 1 , and nanoparticle (NP) could cause heart rate (HR), time-domain indices, and frequency-domain indices to rise; PM 1–2.5 and BC would cause the frequency-domain index to rise; p -PAHs would cause HR to rise, and CO would cause time-domain index and frequency-domain index to decline. In addition, the moving average time all fell after one hour and might appear at 8 h in HRVs’ largest percentage change caused by each pollutant, results of which suggested that size-fractionated PM, p -PAHs, BC, and CO exposures have delayed effects on HRVs. In conclusion, the results of the study showed that the increase in personal pollutant exposure would affect cardiac autonomic control function of healthy older residents in metropolitan areas, and the susceptibility of cardiovascular effects was higher than that of healthy young people. Since the small sample size would limit the generalizability of this study, more studies with larger scale are warranted to better understand the HRV effects of simultaneous PM and other pollution exposures for subpopulation groups.

Keywords: heart rate variability; particulate matter; particle-bound polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons; black carbon; carbon monoxide; healthy older adults (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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