Assessment of Local Air Pollution Impacts on Health

Methodological considerations in developing local-scale health impact assessments: balancing national, regional, and local data (12 page pdf, Bryan J. Hubbell & Neal Fann & Jonathan I. Levy, Air Qual Atmos Health, Mar. 31, 2009)

Today’s review article compares the factors that need to be considered when carrying out a local or urban scale health impact assessment compared to a national one- as well as the differences to be expected in adding up local scale assessment where possible for a national total.



Key Quotes:

“This paper investigates the data and analytical challenges to estimating the incidence of health effects associated with changes in air pollution concentrations at the local scale, focusing on ozone and fine particulate matter”

“local-scale assessments require more geographically resolved air quality data, concentration–response (C-R) functions, and baseline incidence rates than are often used”

“most epidemiological studies relate health outcomes to central-site monitored concentrations rather than personal exposure, factors that affect the relationship between personal exposure and ambient concentrations can potentially affect the C-R function. Some of these exposure-related factors include air conditioning prevalence and utilization, availability and effectiveness of air quality alerts, and amounts of time spent outdoors or in traffic

“Careful comparisons of those exposure or susceptibility factors that might change the relationship between ambient pollutant concentrations and health outcomes should be conducted prior to selecting C-R functions for a particular location”

“For pollutants such as directly emitted PM_2.5, we would expect a high degree of variability in the geographic distribution of air quality changes across urban areas.. finer-scale air quality data will clearly take on added importance for a local-scale HIA in which it may be of interest to align inputs such as the baseline incidence rates and populations with the spatial air quality gradient.”

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