Air quality and preventable deaths in Tekirdag, Turkey

Ambient air pollution is potentially harmful pollutants released by industries, households, vehicles, power plants, and biomass burning. Of all of these pollutants, fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has the greatest effect on human health and it is associated with an increased risk of several causes of death which cause cardiovascular and respiratory diseases and cancers. The purpose of this study was to examine the association of air pollution with mortality and to calculate mortality attributed to air pollution. It is an ecological study. The number of deaths attributed to air pollution was calculated with AirQ+ methodology. Twenty-four-hour SO2 measurements in the study region, with its intensive motor traffic, exceeded the national and WHO threshold values on 5 days and 143 days, while PM10 values exceeded those limits on 239 days and 331 days, respectively. According to AirQ+ calculation, 25.2% of deaths were caused by air pollution, with 415 in 100,000 deaths being attributable to air pollution. We recommend that PM2.5 be included among the air quality index evaluation criteria by means of amendment to the existing legislation, and that a national threshold limit for PM2.5 be determined in Turkey.