ArticleGeoHealth2023
Effects of Desert Dust and Sandstorms on Human Health: A Scoping Review.
Article in GeoHealth, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Impact of Ambient Air Pollution on Cardiovascular Diseases in Low- and Lower-Middle-Income Countries: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Global heart · 2026Pooled it
- Dirty Earth, Diseased Hearts: Soil, Water, and Plastic Pollution in the Cardiovascular Exposome.Anatolian journal of cardiology · 2026Article
- New approaches to uncover COPD pathobiology and develop therapies.JCI insight · 2026Review
- Desert Sand and Dust Storms and Desert Dust Episodes: Major Patterns to be Accounted for to Protect the Health of Exposed Population: A Review.ACS ES&T air · 2025Review
- A comprehensive review/expert statement on environmental risk factors of cardiovascular disease.Cardiovascular research · 2025Review
- Models to evaluate the pulmonary toxicity of desert dust and what we have learned from them so far: a mini-review.Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archives of pharmacology · 2025Review
- Cell Death and Proliferation Variability Caused by Different Dust Clay Minerals Using the Single-Cell Method.GeoHealth · 2025Article
- Impact of Saharan Dust andInternational journal of molecular sciences · 2025Article
- Soil and water pollution and cardiovascular disease.Nature reviews. Cardiology · 2025Review
- The Association Between Medication Adherence and Health-Related Quality of Life in Patients with COPD: A Cross-Sectional Study.International journal of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease · 2025Observational
- Health Effects of Desert Dust Storms in Children With Asthma: Knowledge, Perceptions and Practices of School Health Visitors in Cyprus.Nursing research and practice · 2025Article
- Sand and dust storms: a growing global health threat calls for international health studies to support policy action.The Lancet. Planetary health · 2025Review
- The 2024 report of the Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: facing record-breaking threats from delayed action.Lancet (London, England) · 2024Review
- The Effects of Dust Storms on People Living in Beijing: A Qualitative Study.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2024Article
- Exploring the Relationship between Wind Patterns and Hospital Admissions Due to Respiratory Symptoms in Children.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- The Impact of Climate Change on Immunity and Gut Microbiota in the Development of Disease.Diseases (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Review
- Clean air in Europe for all! Taking stock of the proposed revision to the ambient air quality directives: a joint ERS, HEI and ISEE workshop report.The European respiratory journal · 2023Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Desert dust and sandstorms are recurring environmental phenomena that are reported to produce serious health risks worldwide. This scoping review was conducted to identify the most likely health effects of desert dust and sandstorms and the methods used to characterize desert dust exposure from the existing epidemiological literature. We systematically searched PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, and Scopus to identify studies that reported the effects of desert dust and sandstorms on human health. Search terms referred to desert dust or sandstorm exposure, names of major deserts, and health outcomes. Health effects were cross-tabulated with study design variables (e.g., epidemiological design and methods to quantify dust exposure), desert dust source, health outcomes and conditions. We identified 204 studies that met the inclusion criteria for the scoping review. More than half of the studies (52.9%) used a time-series study design. However, we found a substantial variation in the methods used to identify and quantify desert dust exposure. The binary metric of dust exposure was more frequently used than the continuous metric for all desert dust source locations. Most studies (84.8%) reported significant associations between desert dust and adverse health effects, mainly for respiratory and cardiovascular mortality and morbidity causes. Although there is a large body of evidence on the health effects of desert dust and sandstorms, the existing epidemiological studies have significant limitations related to exposure measurement and statistical analysis that potentially contribute to inconsistencies in determining the effect of desert dust on human health.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.