Survey of Ambient Air Pollution Health Risk Assessment Tools

Susan C. Anenberg, Anna Belova, Jørgen Brandt, Neal Fann, Sue Greco, Sarath Guttikunda, Marie‐Eve Heroux, Fintan Hurley, Michal Krzyzanowski, Sylvia Medina, Brian Miller, Kiran Pandey, Joachim Roos and Rita Van Dingenen

Risk Analysis, 2016, vol. 36, issue 9, 1718-1736

Abstract: Designing air quality policies that improve public health can benefit from information about air pollution health risks and impacts, which include respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and premature death. Several computer‐based tools help automate air pollution health impact assessments and are being used for a variety of contexts. Expanding information gathered for a May 2014 World Health Organization expert meeting, we survey 12 multinational air pollution health impact assessment tools, categorize them according to key technical and operational characteristics, and identify limitations and challenges. Key characteristics include spatial resolution, pollutants and health effect outcomes evaluated, and method for characterizing population exposure, as well as tool format, accessibility, complexity, and degree of peer review and application in policy contexts. While many of the tools use common data sources for concentration‐response associations, population, and baseline mortality rates, they vary in the exposure information source, format, and degree of technical complexity. We find that there is an important tradeoff between technical refinement and accessibility for a broad range of applications. Analysts should apply tools that provide the appropriate geographic scope, resolution, and maximum degree of technical rigor for the intended assessment, within resources constraints. A systematic intercomparison of the tools’ inputs, assumptions, calculations, and results would be helpful to determine the appropriateness of each for different types of assessment. Future work would benefit from accounting for multiple uncertainty sources and integrating ambient air pollution health impact assessment tools with those addressing other related health risks (e.g., smoking, indoor pollution, climate change, vehicle accidents, physical activity).

Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.12540

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:riskan:v:36:y:2016:i:9:p:1718-1736

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Risk Analysis from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().