Effect of Air Pollution on Respiratory System: A Scientometric Analysis

Payal Agrawal¹, Maya Verma²

^1,2S.o.S.in Library and Information Science, Pt. Ravishankar Shukla University, Raipur (C.G.)

¹payalagrawal123494@gmail.com, ²verma_maya64@rediffmail.com

Abstract

Air pollution is a significant health risk factor are all over the worlds. Air pollution has a very bad effect on the respiratory system. The term scientometrics originated as Russian term for the application of quantitative methods of the history of science, which studies the quantitative aspects of science. This applied study was done using scientometric techniques and software. The Data collection was performed on June 2, 2023 from the Web of Science (WoS) database. The search period was from 1991 to 2023. Data has been analyzed with the help of HistCite Software, chart & graphs have been made with the help of Microsoft Excel. In this study, the most productive authors, top journals, year wise distribution, and country-wise distribution of publication has been analyzed. The highest number of scientific output belongs to USA, China and UK followed by other countries which extensively had a lower rate of publication. Science of the Total Environment journal has been ranked first among the journals published the most articles i.e. 111 out of 2805 articles. The result shows that Bradford’s law of scattering does not fit well when analyzing the collected data of research articles of air pollution on respiratory system.

Keywords: Scientometric analysis, Bradford Law, Air pollution, Respiratory system, Publication output.

1.     Introduction

Air pollution is a significant health risk factor in Europe, and all over the world. A global study of diseases risk factors. Approximately 7 million people in the world and 400.000 people in the European Union (EU) experience early death due to air pollution.(Unver)

Air pollution is a complex mixture of different gaseous and particulate components and can cause several health effects. Both long and short term exposure to air pollution can cause cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases (e.g. asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and mortality.(Bergstra et al.)

Four adverse effects of air pollution on respiratory system that is Asthma,  COPD, lung cancer and respiratory infections all seem to be exacerbated due to exposure to a variety of environmental air pollutants with the greatest effects due to particulate matter (PM), ozone and nitrogen oxides, New publications reviewed reaffirm these findings.(Kurt Kar et al.)

Scientometrics

Since the development of scientometrics and bibliometric techniques they are proved to be the most dynamic tools to evaluate the productivity of universities, research institutes and individual researchers, as well as to map the growth of the research field. Scientometrics is a study of quantitative aspects of information in any form, not just records or bibliographies and in any social groups, not just science. It comprises all the metrics studies related to information science including bibliometrics and studies related to science indicators, citation analyses, quantitative research evaluation, etc., and also in recent times scientometrics even study metrics of the web, Internet, etc. The term Scientometrics originated as Russian term for the application of quantitative methods to the history of science, which studies the quantitative aspects of science. (Anuradha)

2.     Review of Literature

Singh, Anuj Raj, et al (2022) The main objective of this article is to do a bibliometric analysis of research trend development in pollutants, its sources and diseases in last forty years from 1981 to 2020, data collected from Web of Science database using keywords “Air Pollution” and “Disease” has been done, in which a total of 17160 results were obtained. The analysis is done by dividing the time scale into three parts i.e.1981-2000, 2001- 2010 and 2011- 2020. Data was analyzed with the help of Bibexcel Software and Ms excel has been used to prepare Pivot Charts and Vos viewer Software has been used to prepare Map.(Singh et al.)

Dhital, Sushma and Rupakheti, Dipesh (2019) In this study to give a basic overview of research publication on air pollution and human health, a bibliometric analysis of 2179 documents published during the last two decades ( year 1998 to 2017) was carried out. The relevant data was retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) and analyzed by using the software such as VOS viewer 1.6.7, Tableau public 2018.1 and origin pro 9.0 for visualization and mapping. The publication trend showed a drastic increase during the second decade. The most productive countries working in the field of air pollution and human health were the USA, China, Italy, England and Canada, whereas top institution were Chinese Academy of Sciences, US EPA, Harvard University. Majority of the researches were published in the journal like Atmospheric Environment, Science of the Total Environment and Environmental Science and Pollution Research. (Dhital and Rupakheti)

Sweileh, Waleed M, et al (2018)  The aim of this study was to analyze out door air pollution documents related to respiratory health retrieved from scopus database. The study period was up to 1900 to 2017. Search query yielded 3635 documents with an h-index of 137. There was a dramatic increase in the number of publication in the last decade of the study period. The most frequently encountered author keyword were air pollution (835 occurrences), asthma (502 occurrences), particulate matter (198 occurrences) and children (203 occurrences). The United States of America ranked first (1082; 29.8%) followed by the United Kingdom (279; 7.7%) and Italy (198; 5.4%). Mapping of author keywords was carried out using VOS viewer 1.6.6.(Sweileh et al.)

Jia, Xiaofeng, et al (2013) This study conduct a bibliometric analysis of the published literature on the effects of air pollution on the cardiovascular system, selecting article with the medical subject headings (MeSH) “ Particulate matter” and Cardiovascular System” in

PubMed/MEDLINE (from 2007 to 2012). Bibliographic records of 935 article were downloaded and imported into the software package TDA (Thomson Data Analyzer). TDA was used to remove duplicate records and clean up inconsistent data. The bibliographic information ( year published, author, publisher and affiliation) of articles in the database has been reviewed and analyzed. The annual publication of articles has increased from 144 in 2007 to 199 in 2011.(Jia et al.)

3.     Objective

The study is carried out

·       To analyze the worldwide research production in the effect of air pollution on respiratory system.

·       To analyze the Year- wise distribution of publication.

·       To check the Country wise distribution of publication.

·       To examine the scattering of article on different journals using the Bradford’s Law. 

·       To define the most productive authors on work of air pollution on respiratory system.

4.     Methodology

Data collection was performed on June 2, 2023 in the Web of Science (WoS) database, the search period was from 1991 to 2 June 2023. The search strategy was carried on using the following keywords “Air Pollution and Respiratory System” then 2805 article were retrieved. Data has been analyzed with the help of HistCite Software chart & graphs have been made with the help of Microsoft excel. Total 808 journal retrieved from the collected data. The articles in the collected data are arranged in descending order and classified into three Zones: Zone 1, Zone 2 and Zone 3 based on the total number of articles and citation received.

5.     Data Analysis and Interpretation

Ranking of Journals and Distribution as Zones

“Core Journal ranking studies are typically carried out to help select journals and assess a specific field’s relevance for one or more journals. The journals arrangement is ordered in descending frequency order where the journals with the highest publications are marked first and the next is ranked second and accordingly others.”(Borgohain et al.) A total number of 2805 publications were published in 808 journals during the study period and these were classified into three Zones: Zone 1, Zone 2 and Zone 3 (Table 1) . Zone 1 included 18 journals (total 945 article); Zone 2 consists 111 journals (total 945 article) and Zone 3 contains 679 journals (total 915 article).

Table 1

Scattering of Journals and Articles in Different Zone

Table 2 shows the rank and frequency-wise table of different journals belonging to Zone 1 and Zone 2. The journal “Science of The Total Environment” ranked at the top with 111 articles. “International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health” and “Environmental Science and Pollution Research” occupied the second and third ranks with 100 and 86 articles, respectively.

Table 2

Core Journals in Environmental Science

Table 3

Scattering of Journals and Articles over Bradford’s Zones

Bradford Law of scattering is used as a tool to study the output of journals. It expresses the quantitative connection between journals where the journals are arranged in descending order of productivity and divided into equal zones. He defined the first zone as “nuclear zone”, which is highly productive and a small number of core journals belong to this zone. The second zone is moderately productive, while the third zone is less productive. Where the number of periodicals in the nucleus and succeeding zones will be 1: n: n2, where n is a multiplier.(Hiremath et al.)

                                                                     1: n: n²

                                                                                 1: 18: (18)²

                                                                                  1: 18: 342

The above data set is not fitted in the Bradford’s Law of scattering.

Table 4

 Year - Wise Distribution

Table 4 indicate the year - wise distribution of air pollution on respiratory system research. The highest output was obtained in 2021, i.e. 11.97 % of total output over the period of study.

Fig 1:- Year - Wise Distribution

Table 5

Country Wise Distribution of Air Pollution on Respiratory System research

The country wise distribution has identified 15 countries as shows in table 5. Among the countries USA ranks first in order with 876 articles, China is in second place with 585 articles. UK with 265 articles and Italy is in fourth place with the contribution of 231 articles and respectively.

Fig 2:- Country Wise Distribution of Air Pollution on Respiratory System research

Table 6

Most productive authors on work of air pollution on respiratory system.

The authors who wrote maximum number of articles of air pollution on respiratory system were identified as shows in table 6. The study found that the first place occupied by Schwartz J he had 24 records. Annesi-Maesano I, Anto JM and Koutrakis P is in second place with 23 records. Goudarzi G is in third place with 22 records and respectively.

6.     Finding

The Scientometric analysis of literature based on Web of Science in the field of effect of air pollution on respiratory system lead to the following findings:

1.     The maximum number of articles have been published by the USA with 876, China with 585 and UK with 265 publications.

2.     The maximum number of articles have been published in the year 2021 is 336 (11.98 %) and the least number of articles have been published in the year 1992 is 5 (0.18 %).

3.     Science of the Total Environment journal has been ranked first among the journals published the most articles i.e. 111 out of 2805 articles followed by International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ranked second and published 100 out of 2805 articles.

4.     Schwartz J, Annesi-Maesano I, Anto JM and Koutrakis P were the most productive author of air Pollution on respiratory system research.

5.     The Bradford’s Law of scattering is not fitted in the Air pollution on respiratory system research because there are lot of error between data.

7.     Conclusion

In the current era, the work of industrial areas is increasing, and poisonous gases coming out of big industries, factories, motors, vehicles, etc. are becoming the main cause of air pollution. Air pollution has a very bad effect on the respiratory system cardiovascular system in the human body. Nowadays the problem of air pollution is rising that cause of research is being done on it day by day and the rate of paper publication is increasing. This study was conducted of air pollution on respiratory system literature published in the world within the time duration of 32 years starting from 1992 to 2023. Most research in the field of air pollution is being done in the USA. The publication growth rate successively increased after 2011. The highest number of papers are published in 2021 and 2022. It is obtained that the Bradford law of scattering does not fit well when analyzing the collected data from research articles of air pollution on the respiratory system.

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