Air quality modeling for health risk assessment of ambient PM10, PM2.5 and SO2 in Iran

In this study, we have estimated the number of total mortality (T-mortality), cardiovascular morbidity (CV-mortality), respiratory mortality (R-mortality), hospital admissions due to cardiovascular diseases (HA-CVD), respiratory diseases (HA-RD), chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) and acute myocardial infarction (AMI) due to exposure to particulate matter less than 10 mu m (PM10), 2.5 mu m (PM2.5) and sulfur dioxide (SO2) in western Iran in 2016. The World Health Organization (WHO) method was used to assess the mortality and morbidity among the exposed people. The results showed that about 3.9% CM (95% CI: 2.9-7.8%), 3.9% HA-RD (95% CI: 2.4-7.8%) and 4.4% HA-CVD (95% CI: 3.0-6.8%) for ambient PM10 and about 7.3% TM (95% CI: 4.2-9.7%), 12.1% CM (95% CI: 3.5-14.6%) and 3.0% RM (95% CI: 0-6.3%) for PM2.5 are respectively attributed to concentrations exceeding 10 mu g/m(3). Furthermore, 3.2% HA-COPD (95% CI: 0-5.04%) and 4.2% AMI (95% CI: 1.6-4.3%) can be attributed to SO2 concentrations greater than 10 mu g/m(3), respectively. To reduce the adverse health effect of PM, health advices provided by health authorities should be given to general population especially vulnerable people such as people with chronic lung and heart pathologies, elderly and children during the dusty days.