The risk of viral infectious diseases outbreak and mortality associated with various environmental pollutions: Different spectrums of infection and trends

Background Previous investigations have investigated the association between the incidence of a single infectious disease and meteorological or chemical pollution factors, but have rarely explored the single and mixed effects of comparing multiple pollutions on incidence and mortality of multiple viral infectious diseases. Methods Our researchers collected six viral infectious diseases data from 2005–2019 as well as meteorological and pollutions (water, life, noise and chemical) factors in Beijing, China. The moving epidemic method (MEM) is applied to estimate epidemic threshold and intensity level. Then, a weighted quantile sum (WQS) regression was developed to assess single and multiple effects among meteorological and pollutions on different spectrums of diseases. Results Across the spectrum of infections, explicit diseases such as HFRS, measles, and influenza were in the advanced, intermediate, and late high levels of prevalence in 2005–2019, respectively, while latent diseases such as viral hepatitis, HFMD and AIDS had high levels of prevalence in the same order. Pollutions with the highest positive estimated weights for these incidence threshold outcomes were domestic waste output (WQS weight = 0.47 for AIDS), industrial wastewater discharge (WQS weight = 0.66 for HFMD), SO ₂ (WQS weight = 0.37 for HFRS) and NO ₂ (WQS weight = 0.20 for Measles). Pollutions with the highest positive estimated weights for these mortality outcomes were harmless treatment ratio for house refuse (WQS weight = 0.32 for AIDS) and industrial wastewater discharge (WQS weight = 0.16 for Influenza). Different incidence threshold and mortality of diseases were some probabilities higher per decile increase in pollutions. Infectious epidemic threshold was mainly affected by domestic and water pollution, while infectious mortality was mainly affected by chemical and water pollution. Conclusions This study represents the first mathematical analysis of seasonal thresholds across two infectious disease spectra, enabling accurate estimation of epidemic severity. Our findings highlight the importance of long-term pollution monitoring for the prevention and control of viral infectious diseases.