Health impact assessment of exposure to transport emissions in Flanders: methodology study

Abstract

Traffic is identified as one of the main contributors to ambient air pollution. New evolutions in exposure assessment provide both more accurate estimations of traffic exhaust concentrations and individual exposure concentrations. However current epidemiology and health impact assessment (HIA) methods are not yet capable of dealing with these new exposure evolutions. In this paper methods are explored to perform a HIA based on an activity-based traffic model. Based on the main traditions of a HIA a stepwise approach is presented, estimating the impact of particulate matter, benzene, ozone and nitrogen dioxide in two strategies. A first strategy serves as the core analysis while a second more expansive strategy, allows more uncertainty in assessing the impact of air pollution.