Quantifying the health impacts of air pollution under a changing climate—a review of approaches and methodology

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Abstract

Climate change has been predicted to affect future air quality, with inevitable consequences for health. Quantifying the health effects of air pollution under a changing climate is crucial to provide evidence for actions to safeguard future populations. In this paper, we review published methods for quantifying health impacts to identify optimal approaches and ways in which existing challenges facing this line of research can be addressed. Most studies have employed a simplified methodology, while only a few have reported sensitivity analyses to assess sources of uncertainty. The limited investigations that do exist suggest that examining the health risk estimates should particularly take into account the uncertainty associated with future air pollution emissions scenarios, concentration-response functions, and future population growth and age structures. Knowledge gaps identified for future research include future health impacts from extreme air pollution events, interactions between temperature and air pollution effects on public health under a changing climate, and how population adaptation and behavioural changes in a warmer climate may modify exposure to air pollution and health consequences.

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The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00484-012-0625-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Sarunya Sujaritpong: u4742983@anu.edu.au , sujaritpong@yahoo.com

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): Int J Biometeorol

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Int J Biometeorol

Title: International Journal of Biometeorology

Publisher: Springer Berlin Heidelberg (Berlin/Heidelberg )

ISSN (Print): 0020-7128

ISSN (Electronic): 1432-1254

Publication date (Electronic): 25 January 2013

Publication date PMC-release: 25 January 2013

Publication date (Print): 2014

Volume: 58

Pages: 149-160

Affiliations

[ ]National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Canberra, ACT Australia

[ ]Centre for Australian Weather and Climate Research, Melbourne, Victoria Australia

[ ]EPA Victoria, Melbourne, Victoria Australia

Article

Publisher ID: 625

DOI: 10.1007/s00484-012-0625-8

PMC ID: 3936128

PubMed ID: 23354423

SO-VID: e1c92484-4a2e-426a-980d-8f2da54164d4

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.