|
Development of a model for
quantification of general population exposure to air pollution in Sweden.
Relevance
In many areas the air pollution levels of specific compounds still exceeding the
health related air quality guidelines and health effects of exposure to air
pollutants, even at moderate levels, have been shown in many studies during
recent years. There is an increasing need of tools to estimate the magnitude of
the health effects in order to evaluate the number of people exposed to harmful
pollution levels and hence to improve the basis for decisions on air pollution
control strategies.
Aims
The aims of the project are mainly:
-
To
provide a
model for quantifying the general population exposure of different ambient
air pollutants on a national level.
-
To
develop a
low cost software tool useful for exposure assessment in epidemiological air
pollution studies as well as trend and prediction studies.
Methods and
Accomplishment
For more than fifteen years air pollution levels related to health effects has
been studied in small to medium sized cities in Sweden within the framework of
the urban air quality network, a co-operation between local authorities and IVL.
Based on the results achieved within the urban air quality network the so-called
"Urban model" has been developed, a useful tool to assess the risk for
exceedances of Environmental air quality standards in urban environments in
Sweden by applying air monitoring data (diurnal resolution) from around 100
towns of different sizes and location in the country and relations between
rural/urban background/street level concentrations of NO2, benzene
and particles (soot, PM10) respectively. Within this project the
Urban model will be further developed to work as a basis for quantifying the
general population exposure of different ambient air pollutants on a national
level, where e.g. the number of people exposed to a specific concentration level
of a certain air pollutant can be estimated and geographically distributed
exposure patterns can be achieved. Based on exposure-response relationships it
will also be possible to estimate health impact due to air pollution.
The model will be
based on measured/estimated air quality data divided in 3-4 different levels for
each municipality in the country (urban, suburban and more rural areas),
relations between outdoor/indoor air concentrations, population statistics using
estimates of the number of people living in urban/suburban/rural areas in towns
of different sizes and locations, consideration of time spent indoors/outdoors
etc. Further, the model will provide possibilities to choose different levels of
details for exposure estimates, i.e. to calculate the general exposure to air
pollution based on assumptions of individual behaviour or only on ambient air
concentrations for use in epidemiological studies.
The model will be
applicable to different air pollution compounds as long as relevant input data
are available. However, this study will focus on NO2, benzene and
particles (black smoke, PM10) since these pollutants are closely
related to the dominant emission sources traffic and biomass burning (wood).
In order to
validate the accuracy and sensitivity of this rather coarse model for exposure
assessment on a national level the relevant parts of the resulting population
exposure levels will be compare to the outcome of the exposure model planned to
be developed for the Scania Region (SNAP-project 14, GIS-tool for exposure),
in which both the spatial and temporal resolution are higher. The results will
also be validated against personal exposure measurements carried out e.g. within
the framework of the research program and the national environmental monitoring
programme.
Documentation
The results of the project will be documented and published in a report and
presented in seminars/conferences etc. The model will be used for exposure
assessment in epidemiologic air pollution studies.
|
