Quantifying the health impacts of ambient air pollutants: recommendations of a WHO/Europe project

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Abstract

Objective

Quantitative estimates of air pollution health impacts have become an increasingly critical input to policy decisions. The WHO project “Health risks of air pollution in Europe—HRAPIE” was implemented to provide the evidence-based concentration–response functions for quantifying air pollution health impacts to support the 2013 revision of the air quality policy for the European Union (EU).

Methods

A group of experts convened by WHO Regional Office for Europe reviewed the accumulated primary research evidence together with some commissioned reviews and recommended concentration–response functions for air pollutant–health outcome pairs for which there was sufficient evidence for a causal association.

Results

The concentration–response functions link several indicators of mortality and morbidity with short- and long-term exposure to particulate matter, ozone and nitrogen dioxide. The project also provides guidance on the use of these functions and associated baseline health information in the cost–benefit analysis.

Conclusions

The project results provide the scientific basis for formulating policy actions to improve air quality and thereby reduce the burden of disease associated with air pollution in Europe.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00038-015-0690-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Most cited references 12

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A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

Stephen S Lim, Theo Vos, Abraham D. Flaxman … (2012)

The Lancet, 380(9859), 2224-2260

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The global burden of disease due to outdoor air pollution.

Aaron J. Cohen, H. Ross Anderson, Bart Ostro … (2005)

As part of the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Burden of Disease Comparative Risk Assessment, the burden of disease attributable to urban ambient air pollution was estimated in terms of deaths and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Air pollution is associated with a broad spectrum of acute and chronic health effects, the nature of which may vary with the pollutant constituents. Particulate air pollution is consistently and independently related to the most serious effects, including lung cancer and other cardiopulmonary mortality. The analyses on which this report is based estimate that ambient air pollution, in terms of fine particulate air pollution (PM(2.5)), causes about 3% of mortality from cardiopulmonary disease, about 5% of mortality from cancer of the trachea, bronchus, and lung, and about 1% of mortality from acute respiratory infections in children under 5 yr, worldwide. This amounts to about 0.8 million (1.2%) premature deaths and 6.4 million (0.5%) years of life lost (YLL). This burden occurs predominantly in developing countries; 65% in Asia alone. These estimates consider only the impact of air pollution on mortality (i.e., years of life lost) and not morbidity (i.e., years lived with disability), due to limitations in the epidemiologic database. If air pollution multiplies both incidence and mortality to the same extent (i.e., the same relative risk), then the DALYs for cardiopulmonary disease increase by 20% worldwide.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Marie-Eve Héroux: +49 228 815 0437 , herouxm@ecehbonn.euro.who.int

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Int J Public Health

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Int J Public Health

Title: International Journal of Public Health

Publisher: Springer Basel (Basel )

ISSN (Print): 1661-8556

ISSN (Electronic): 1661-8564

Publication date (Electronic): 30 May 2015

Publication date PMC-release: 30 May 2015

Publication date (Print): 2015

Volume: 60

Issue: 5

Pages: 619-627

Affiliations

[ ]WHO European Centre for Environment and Health, WHO Regional Office for Europe, Bonn, Germany

[ ]MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, Population Health Research Institute, St George’s, University of London, London, UK

[ ]Institute for Risk Assessment Sciences, Universiteit Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands

[ ]Julius Center for Primary Care and Health Sciences, University Medical Center Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands

[ ]Health Effects Institute, Boston, USA

[ ]Dipartimento di Epidemiologia, ASL Roma E, Rome, Italy

[ ]Institute of Occupational Medicine, Riccarton, Edinburgh UK

[ ]Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology and Medical Statistics, University of Athens Medical School, Athens, Greece

[ ]McLaughlin Centre for Population Health Risk Assessment, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, ON Canada

[ ]Environmental Research Group, King’s College London, London, UK

[ ]Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute, Basel, Switzerland

[ ]University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

[ ]Centre for Radiation, Chemical and Environmental Hazards, Public Health England, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire UK

[ ]Institute of Environmental Assessment and Water Research (IDÆA), Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), Barcelona, Spain

[ ]Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment (OEHHA), Oakland, USA

[ ]MRC-PHE Centre for Environment and Health, and NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust and King’s College London, London, UK

Article

Publisher ID: 690

DOI: 10.1007/s00038-015-0690-y

PMC ID: 4480843

PubMed ID: 26024815

SO-VID: 47958b6f-cd1d-440b-b42f-d886b3150865

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.

History

Date received : 1 December 2014

Date revision received : 7 May 2015

Date accepted : 11 May 2015

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: air pollutants,health impact assessment,cost–benefit analysis,particulate matter,ozone,nitrogen dioxide

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Public health

Keywords: air pollutants, health impact assessment, cost–benefit analysis, particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen dioxide

Quantifying the health impacts of ambient air pollutants: recommendations of a WHO/Europe project

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Abstract

Objective

Methods

Results

Conclusions

Electronic supplementary material

Related collections

Pneumonia, sex, and the environment

Most cited references 12

A comparative risk assessment of burden of disease and injury attributable to 67 risk factors and risk factor clusters in 21 regions, 1990–2010: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

GBD 2010: design, definitions, and metrics.

The global burden of disease due to outdoor air pollution.

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Contributors

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