Exposure Assessment for Estimation of the Global Burden of Disease Attributable to Outdoor Air Pollution

Ambient air pollution is associated with numerous adverse health impacts. Current assessments of global attributable disease burden have been limited to urban areas or by coarse spatial resolution of concentration estimates. Recent developments in remote sensing, global chemical transport models, and improvements in the quality and coverage of surface measurements allow for virtually complete high spatial resolution global estimates of air pollutant concentrations. We combined these data to generate global estimates of long-term average ambient concentrations of fine particles (PM2.5) and ozone at 0.1° x 0.1° spatial resolution for 1990 and 2005. In 2005, 89% of the world’s population lived in areas where the World Health Organization Air Quality Guideline of 10 µg/m3 PM2.5 (annual average) was exceeded. In South and East Asia, this proportion was 99%, with lower proportions in Western Europe (92%) and North America (76%). The highest seasonal ozone levels were apparent in North and Latin America, Europe, South and East Asia, and parts of Africa. Between 1990 and 2005 a general global decrease in PM2.5 and ozone concentrations was apparent, highlighted by decreased concentrations in North America and Europe but increases in East, South and Southeast Asia. Combined with spatially resolved population distributions, these estimates can be used for health impact assessment, expanding the ability of such analyses to evaluate the full global health burden associated with outdoor air pollution. ; JRC.H.2 - Air and Climate