Health impacts and burden of disease attributed to long-term exposure to atmospheric PM10/PM2.5 in Karaj, Iran: effect of meteorological factors

There are sporadic researches on evaluating the health endpoints and burden of disease resulted from long-term exposure to atmospheric PM10/PM2.5 by AirQ(+) model in the world. Therefore, the aim of the current work was to evaluate the effect of PM10/PM2.5 on health of residents in Karaj city, Iran using AirQ(+). To this end, data on population, the baseline incidence rates of health outcomes in Karaj's inhabitants, meteorological parameters and PM10/PM2.5 concentrations (from 2012 to 2016) were obtained from governmental organisations.The correlation between the PM10/PM2.5 levels and meteorological parameters in the research period were evaluated by statistical analysis using SPSS (R) 22 and R software. Finally, the health endpointsanddisease burden was estimated using WHO-approved AirQ(+)software. The results of statistical correlation analysis indicated that PM2.5/PM10 are positively correlated with relative humidity and temperature (P < 0.05), but the negativelycorrelatedwithother two parameters (precipitation and wind speed) (P > 0.05). The quantitative risk assessment conducted by AirQ+ showed that all-cause deaths, the deaths from cerebrovascular disease (stroke), chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), lung cancer (LC), ischaemic heart disease (IHD) and acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) in periods of time 2012-2016wereestimated 3894, 1834, 124, 139, 2410 and 21 cases, respectively. On the other hand, PM10-attributable mortality from 2012 to 2016 were estimated 1619 cases. The findings obtained from of the regression correlation analysis relationship between PM2.5 concentrations and the number of mortality revealed that by increasing 1 mu g/m(3)in PM2.5 concentrations, about 14 cases will be added to the total deaths of Karaj city.

Automated summary

This study evaluated the health effects of long-term exposure to atmospheric PM10/PM2.5 on residents in Karaj city, Iran using the AirQ(+) model. The results showed correlations between PM10/PM2.5 levels and meteorological parameters, and estimated the burden of various health endpoints associated with PM10/PM2.5.