Improving consistency in estimating future health burdens from environmental risk factors: Case study for ambient air pollution

Environ Int. 2024 Mar 13;185:108560. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2024.108560. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTFuture changes in exposure to risk factors should impact mortality rates and population. However, studies commonly use mortality rates and population projections developed exogenously to the health impact assessment model used to quantify future health burdens attributable to environmental risks that are therefore invariant to projected exposure levels. This impacts the robustness of many future health burden estimates for environmental risk factors. This work describes an alternative methodology that more consistently represents the interaction between risk factor exposure, population and mortality rates, using ambient particulate air pollution (PM2.5) as a case study. A demographic model is described that estimates future population based on projected births, mortality and migration. Mortality rates are disaggregated between the fraction due to PM2.5 exposure and other factors for a historic year, and projected independently. Accounting for feedbacks between future risk factor exposure and population and mortality rates can greatly affect estimated future attributable health burdens. The demographic model estimates much larger PM2.5-attributable health burdens with constant 2019 PM2.5 (∼10.8 million deaths in 2050) compared to a model using exogenous population and mortality rate projections (∼7.3 million), largely due to differences in mortality rate projection methods...

Source: Environment International - March 16, 2024 Category: Environmental Health Authors: Christopher S Malley Susan C Anenberg Drew T Shindell Source Type: research