Background Air quality health index (AQHI) is derived from exposure-response coefficients calculated from air pollution and morbidity/mortality time series, which helps to understand the overall short-term health impacts of air pollution.

Objective To study the effects of common air pollutants on respiratory diseases in Urumqi and to develop an AQHI for the risk of respiratory diseases in the city.

Methods The daily outpatient volume data of respiratory diseases from The First Affiliated Hospital of Xinjiang Medical University, meteorological data (daily mean temperature and daily mean relative humidity), and air pollutants fine particulate matter (PM_2.5), inhalable particulate matter (PM₁₀), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), carbon dioxide (CO), and ozone (O₃) in Urumqi City, Xinjiang, China were collected from January 1, 2017 to December 31, 2021. A distributed lag nonlinear model based on quasi-Poisson distribution was constructed by time-stratified case crossover design. Adopting zero concentration of air pollutants as reference, the exposure-response coefficient (β value) was used to quantify the impact of included air pollutants on the risk of seeking medical treatment for respiratory diseases, and the AQHI was established. The association of between AQHI and the incidence of respiratory diseases and between air quality index (AQI) and the incidence of respiratory diseases was compared to evaluate the prediction effect of AQHI.

Results Each 10 µg·m⁻³ increase in PM₁₀, SO₂, NO₂, and O₃ concentrations presented the highest excess risk of seeking outpatient services at 3 d cumulative lag (Lag03) and 2d cumulative lag (Lag02), with increased risks of morbidity of 0.687% (95%CI: 0.101%, 1.276%), 17.609% (95%CI: 3.253%, 33.961%), 13.344% (95%CI: 8.619%, 18.275%), and 4.921% (95%CI: 1.401%, 8.502%), respectively. There was no statistically significant PM_2.5 or CO lag effect. An AQHI was constructed based on a model containing PM₁₀, SO₂, NO₂, and O₃, and the results showed that the excess risk of respiratory disease consultation for the whole population, different genders, ages, or seasons for each inter-quartile range increase in the AQHI was higher than the corresponding value of AQI.

Conclusion PM₁₀, SO₂, NO₂, and O₃ impact the number of outpatient visits for respiratory diseases in Urumqi, and the constructed AQHI for the risk of respiratory diseases in Urumqi outperforms the AQI in predicting the effect of air pollution on respiratory health.