Air quality modeling for health risk assessment of ambient PM₁₀, PM_2.5 and SO₂ in Iran

Abstract

In this study, we have estimated the number of total mortality (T-mortality), cardiovascular morbidity (CV-mortality), respiratory mortality (R-mortality), hospital admissions due to cardiovascular diseases (HA-CVD), respiratory diseases (HA-RD), chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) due to exposure to particulate matter less than 10 µm (PM₁₀), 2.5 µm (PM_2.5) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂) in western Iran in 2016. The World Health Organization (WHO) method was used to assess the mortality and morbidity among the exposed people. The results showed that about 3.9% CM (95% CI: 2.9–7.8%), 3.9% HA-RD (95% CI: 2.4–7.8%) and 4.4% HA-CVD (95% CI: 3.0–6.8%) for ambient PM₁₀ and about 7.3% TM (95% CI: 4.2–9.7%), 12.1% CM (95% CI: 3.5–14.6%) and 3.0% RM (95% CI: 0–6.3%) for PM_2.5 are respectively attributed to concentrations exceeding 10 µg/m³. Furthermore, 3.2% HA-COPD (95% CI: 0–5.04%) and 4.2% AMI (95% CI: 1.6–4.3%) can be attributed to SO₂ concentrations greater than 10 µg/m³, respectively. To reduce the adverse health effect of PM, health advices provided by health authorities should be given to general population especially vulnerable people such as people with chronic lung and heart pathologies, elderly and children during the dusty days.

Keywords:

• air pollution
• exposure
• COPD
• acute MI

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thanks to the Local Agency of Khorramabad, Iran for funding collection of PM₁₀ and SO₂ data (grant no: LUMS-1615).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.