Slight atmospheric pressure fluctuations as the risk factor promoting aggressive behaviour

Atmospheric pressure fluctuations (APF) are considered to be an adaptive meteorological factor, influencing human health, psychical and physical state, and behavior. Particular interest is the meteorotropic features of the APF with periods from seconds to deco-minutes related to the infrasound (APF-I) and internal gravity waves (APF-G) phenomena. The common low levels of APF-I with periods from 3 s to 120 s are considered to be a stimulating factor for human mental and physical activity. Meanwhile, their high levels are a risk factor resulting in the additional strain for adaptation mechanisms. Such APF-I can increase mental and physiological strain, creating potential danger for a failure of the adequate behaviour resulting in injuries occurrence. In contrast, the same high level APF-G with longer periods (120 s < T < 1200 s) is rather a weak physical factor, which have the activating influences on normal human activity. As a result of their effects the decrease in sport injuries number was documented on days with high APF-I and low APF-I levels. It follows from the previous studies that the high APF-G as well the low APF-I being an activating factor can also promote the human aggressive behavior. Meanwhile, the high APF-I disrupting effects on people purposeful activity is positive factor favoring to decrease in risk of aggressive actions. The purpose of this study is to verify hypothesis that there is the relation between APF physical characteristics and criminal aggressive behavior with injury consequences, and to analyze the physical characteristics of natural APF from view of their possible effects on the aggressive behavior.

Methods

The study was conducted in Kyiv city (Ukraine). The continuous measurements of atmospheric pressure carried out every 0.5 s with a standard microbarometer outdoors. These monitoring data during the one-year period (from 1 July 2005 to 30 June 2006) are used for the analysis. The APF average hourly integral amplitude (HA) in two ranges of periods related primarily to the far infrasound (I-range, HAI: 3 s - 120 s) and to internal gravity waves (G-range, HAG: 120 s - 1200 s), as well the daily mean of HAI (DHAI) and HAG (DHAG) were calculated. The previous studies revealed the threshold effects of the DHAI and DHAG. Therefore, their values were divided into two categories: the high, when they exceeded the threshold criteria (3.9 Pa and 2.4 Pa, respectively), above which a behaviour response related to injury occurrences were observed, and the low for the other less values. These criteria with the database on the DHAI and DHAG values, and concomitant meteorological variables, particularly the wind velocity (WV) within the interval analyzed are applied to examine the hypothesis that a relation exists between APF and a daily number of emergency transport events due to human criminal behaviour related to injury occurrences (EECI).

Results and discussion

Comparative analysis of DHAI (95% CI: 2.65 – 3.06 Pa, n = 345) and DHAG levels (CI: 2.27 – 2.50 Pa, n = 345) with their threshold criteria (3.9 Pa and 2.4 Pa, respectively) indicates prevalence their common low levels in an atmosphere within the one-year interval analyzed (the number of days for the DHAI and DHAG low levels: n = 254 and n = 214, respectively against their high levels n = 91 and n = 131, respectively). At this atmospheric background the EECI number proved to be significantly greater on days with the high DHAG and the low DHAI values (CI: 48.8 – 53.7, n = 75) when compared to days with the high DHAI (CI: 44.7 – 49.1, n = 72, p = 0.012). These findings corroborate the suggestion that activating influences of the high APF-G as well as the low APF-I, but not the high APF-I, can promote human inadequate aggressive actions with injury consequences. It is believed that APF is the physical agent responsible, at least partially, for biological response to other geophysical factors related to APF origination, particularly wind-induced turbulence. It is also hypothesized that APF could be one of the factors transmitting the influence of solar activity to the biosphere. Our analysis show the higher correlation between the APF-I and WV yearly dynamics (r = 0.72 p = 0,000) than between the APF-G and WV (r = 0.49, p = 0,000). These findings corroborate the more pronounced causal relations of WV with the APF-I, than with the APF-G. Of interest are the facts, that within the five days interval, when the high APF-G with their highest hourly values were observed on the background of the low APF-I, the correlation between hourly dynamics of APF-I and APF-G, as well as between APF-G and WV dynamics proved to be below of the level of significance (r = - 0.17, p = 0.3 and r = - 0.067, p = 0,68, respectively), while the significant correlation is shown between APF-I and WV dynamics (r = 0.56, p = 0,0002). These facts evidences once more in the favor of causal relations between APF-I and WV, while the high level APF-G are more associated with the other physical sources. To conclude, the present study contributes to the understanding of psychotropic effects of APF. It seems, that certain physical characteristics of this atmospheric factor present risk for the increase in the level of aggression and as a consequence in the number of injured victims. It also follows from this study that further investigations are needed to clear up the question on relationships between the APF and other biologically significant geophysical as well as cosmic factors.