air pollution & health by jason west, phd
TRANSCRIPT
Air Pollution: What are the health risks
at current levels in the U.S?
Junfeng (Jim) Zhang
Professor of Global and Environmental Health
Fine-Particulate Air Pollution and Life Expectancy in the United States. Arden Pope, III, Ph.D., Majid Ezzati, Ph.D., and Douglas W. Dockery, Sc.D N Engl J Med 2009;360:376-86
Reductions in air pollution accounted for up to 5 months or 15% of total increased life expectancy (2.7 years) since 1970 Clean Air Act.
4
What are risks at current levels?
• For mortality:
– Short-term increases in mortality
– Longer-term increases in mortality
• For morbidity:
– Diverse adverse respiratory effects
– Adverse cardiovascular effects
– Other effects: reproductive, etc
-2.00 -1.00 0.00 1.00 2.00 3.00 4.00
% change
Chicago
Minneapolis
Colorado Springs
New Haven
St. Paul
Overall
Tacoma
Spokane
Seattle
Tucson
p < 0.05
Schwartz
1999
Schwartz
1997
% Change in daily emergency admissions for
cardiovascular disease associated with a 10
µg/m3 increase in daily PM10 concentration
Air Pollution and Reproductive Effects
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
Re
cord
Co
un
t
Publication Year *partial year data
PubMed search string: ("air pollution"[MeSH Terms] OR ("air"[All Fields] AND "pollution"[All Fields]) OR "air pollution"[All Fields]) AND ("reproduction"[MeSH Terms] OR "reproduction"[All Fields] OR "reproductive"[All Fields])
*
The Narrowing Range of Exposure
PM level
NAAQS 1971
Risk
NAAQS 1987
NAAQS 1997
NAAQS 2006
Policy-Related Background
National Ambient Air Quality Standardshttp://www.epa.gov/ttn/naaqs/standards/pm/s_pm_index.html
What is the Form of the Concentration-Response Relationship?
Concentration
RiskSublinear
Supra-linear
Linear, Threshold
Linear, No-threshold
Policy Implication: For the same amount of risk reduction, different amount of concentration reduction is needed under different shapes of concentration-response curves.
Air Pollution & HealthJ. Jason West
Dept. of Environmental Sciences & EngineeringUniv. of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
How do we understand air pollution?
WRF Met model
SMOKE Emissionprocessor
CMAQAir quality
model
Burden of disease model
Recommendations for future measurements
Emissionsinventories
Met measurements
AQ, satellitemeasurements
Emissions Concentrations Health Effects
Exposure
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Global mortality burden – ACCMIP
ensembleOzone-related mortality PM2.5-related mortality(*)
470,000 (95% CI: 140,000 - 900,000) 2.1 million (95% CI: 1.3 - 3.0 million)
(*) PM2.5 calculated as a sum of species (dark blue)
PM2.5 as reported by 4 models (dark green)
Light-colored bars - low-concentration threshold (5.8 µg m-3)
Silva et al. ERL 2013
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Global Burden: PM2.5-related mortality
CPD+LC mortality , deaths yr-1 (1000
km2)-1, multi-model mean in each grid cell , 6 models
Global and regional mortality per year
RegionsTotal
deaths
Deaths
per
million
people
(*)
North America 43,000 152
Europe 154,000 448
Former Soviet
Union128,000 793
Middle East 88,700 371
India 397,000 715
East Asia 1,049,000 1,191
Southeast Asia 158,000 564
South America 16,800 92
Africa 77,500 327
Australia 1,250 78
Global 2,110,000 665
1
(*) Exposed population (age 30 and
older)Silva et al. (2013)
Global burden of disease of outdoor air pollution
Lim et al., 2012
3.2 million deaths per year(95% CI:2.8 – 3.6 million)
WHO GBD 2010
Some uncertainties
• Sources – understanding difficult sources like fires, windblown dust, residential sources.
• Chemical mechanisms – improve complex processes like SOA formation, PM size-composition.
• Observations – lack of observations in rural regions, new opportunities with satellites.
US Policy-relevant analyses
Analysis of individual sector contributions to US air pollution mortality.
Fann et al., EST, 2013
Co-benefits of global GHG mitigation for air quality and health
Avoided air pollution-related deaths
from global GHG reductions:
2030: 0.5 ± 0.2 million yr-1
2050: 1.3 ± 0.5
2100: 2.2 ± 0.8
2030
Monetized health co-benefits
(blue & red) vs. cost of GHG
reduction (green):
West et al., NCC, 2013
Better relating atmospheric science and health impacts
• Communities need to work together more!
– Use models and satellites to estimate exposure for epidemiologic studies.
– Better measure key pollutants of interest (ultrafine PM, chemical components of PM, metals).
– Estimate air pollution by source for epidemiologic studies.
– Better relate “ambient concentration” with personal exposure to drive health studies.
Goal for Today’s Discussion
Identify 3-5 recommendations and opportunities to improve scientific understanding of air pollution and its healtheffects.
• Foci – a city, NC, USA, global• Aspects of science – understanding sources,
atmospheric processes, mechanisms of health impacts, epidemiology.
• Links with other problems – climate change, mobility, energy, economics, related health effects.
Science & Health Recommendations
• Communication of science to public & policy – what is the nugget?– Make it personal– Citizen science, ozone gardens, daily air pollution communication– Overcoming scientific demoralism– How to visualize air quality & health effects?– Training scientists to communicate. Use communication professionals.
• Analysis inspired by policy – Importance of different sectors, sources – Agriculture is underappreciated & undercontrolled in NC
• Improving health effects studies– Take advantage of key health data (NC DETECT)– Relation of air pollution with precursors of disease (anxiety, pain, mood, obesity)– Susceptible populations– Analysis of Mixtures, pollutant properties– Citizen science– Effects of bioaccumulation, understand toxicity.
• Atmospheric scientists and health scientists working together better– Better methods to work across scales.– Provide info on sources.
• Plan for interventions to prevent health effects– Diet & exercise as mitigating factor.– Working with susceptible populations