Quantifying the impact of current and future concentrations of air pollutants on respiratory disease risk in England

Abstract

BackgroundEstimating the long-term health impact of air pollution in a spatio-temporal ecological study requires representative concentrations of air pollutants to be constructed for each geographical unit and time period. Averaging concentrations in space and time is commonly carried out, but little is known about how robust the estimated health effects are to different aggregation functions. A second under researched question is what impact air pollution is likely to have in the future.MethodsWe conducted a study for England between 2007 and 2011, investigating the relationship between respiratory hospital admissions and different pollutants: nitrogen dioxide (NO2); ozone (O3); particulate matter, the latter including particles with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 micrometers (PM2.5), and less than 10 micrometers (PM10); and sulphur dioxide (SO2). Bayesian Poisson regression models accounting for localised spatio-temporal autocorrelation were used to estimate the relative risks (RRs) of pollution on disease risk, and for each pollutant four representative concentrations were constructed using combinations of spatial and temporal averages and maximums. The estimated RRs were then used to make projections of the numbers of likely respiratory hospital admissions in the 2050s attributable to air pollution, based on emission projections from a number of Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP).ResultsNO2 exhibited the largest association with respiratory hospital admissions out of the pollutants considered, with estimated increased risks of between 0.9 and 1.6% for a one standard deviation increase in concentrations. In the future the projected numbers of respiratory hospital admissions attributable to NO2 in the 2050s are lower than present day rates under 3 Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs): 2.6, 6.0, and 8.5, which is due to projected reductions in future NO2 emissions and concentrations.ConclusionsNO2 concentrations exhibit consistent substantial present-day health effects regardless of how a representative concentration is constructed in space and time. Thus as concentrations are predicted to remain above limits set by European Union Legislation until the 2030s in parts of urban England, it will remain a substantial health risk for some time.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12940-017-0237-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

A description and evaluation of an air quality model nested within global and regional composition-climate models using MetUM

“…The ability to model air quality at the regional scale will be particularly important for health impact modelling where high spatial resolution is important to allow the concentration variations to be matched to population locations. Indeed, the techniques in this paper have already been applied to 2050s climate and air quality in Pannullo et al (2017) Tables A2, A3, and A4. Lock et al (2000) and Lock (2001) with scalar flux-gradient option Lock et al (2000) and Lock (2001) (Smith, 1990) Microphysics (large-scale precip) Wilson and Ballard (1999) enhanced for PC2 and graupel Wilson and Ballard (1999) Radiation Edwards and Slingo (1996) with Cusack et al (1999) for gaseous absorption and incremental adjustments to fluxes and cloud between full radiation time steps (time stepping The method for deriving AQUM emissions of VOCs from RCCM emissions is described in Sect.…”

“…In Table 2 a comparison of the percentage of observations/model values greater than the 65.0 µg m −3 threshold is also included; it illustrates that AQUM-h simulates observed frequencies of higher NO 2 concentrations well, making it better suited to calculating health burdens due to elevated levels of NO 2 (e.g. Pannullo et al, 2017). However, shown in Fig.…”

Real‐time PM2.5 mapping and anomaly detection from AirBoxes in Taiwan

“…For example, Dominici et al () used PM 2.5 data in the Air Quality System database and found their associations with cardiovascular and respiratory hospital admissions. Pannullo et al () used PM 2.5 data on a 12 km × 12 km regular grid in England and studied the impact of PM 2.5 on respiratory diseases.…”

Assessment of respirable particulates in two residential areas of Kuwait State during dusty and nondusty storms: A time-series comparative study

“…Dust storms transport yearly ⁓2.2 billion tons of soil and dry sediments throughout the earth [2] . Furthermore, many studies reported increased hospital admittance for respiratory and cardiovascular diseases owing to exposure to dust storms [3,4] . In addition to the public health effects, the agriculture, air traffic, and tourism are also affected [5][6][7] .…”

“…Dust storms are one of the major natural sources of respirable particulates in Kuwait State [10,11] . Several European [3,12] , USA [13] , Middle East [7,14] , Kuwait [15,16] , and Chinese studies [17] revealed high risk of lung cancer, heart diseases, and chronic obstructive lung diseases among those exposed to PM10.…”