Health effect estimates depend on the methods of evaluating exposures. Due to non-linearities in the exposure-response relationships, both the predicted mean exposures as well as its spatial ...variability are significant. The aim of this work is to systematically quantify the impact of the spatial resolution on population-weighted mean concentration (PWC), its variance, and mortality attributable to fine particulate matter (PM
2.5
) exposure in Finland in 2015. The atmospheric chemical transport model SILAM was used to estimate the ambient air PM
2.5
concentrations at 0.02° longitudinal × 0.01° latitudinal resolution (ca. 1 km), including both the national PM
2.5
emissions and the long-range transport. The decision-support model FRES source-receptor matrices applied at 250-m resolution was used to model the ambient air concentrations of primary fine particulate matter (PPM
2.5
) from local and regional sources up to 10 km and 20 km distances. Numerical averaging of population and concentrations was used to produce the results for coarser resolutions. Population-weighted PM
2.5
concentration was 11% lower at a resolution of 50 km, compared with the corresponding computations at a resolution of 1 km. However, considering only the national emissions, the influences of spatial averaging were substantially larger. The average population-weighted local PPM
2.5
concentration originated from Finnish sources was 70% lower at a resolution of 50 km, compared with the corresponding result obtained using a resolution of 250 m. The sensitivity to spatial averaging, between the finest 250-m and the coarsest 50-km resolution, was highest for the emissions of PPM
2.5
originated from national vehicular traffic (about 80% decrease) and lowest for the national residential combustion (60% decrease). Exposure estimates in urban areas were more sensitive to the changes of model resolution (14% and 74% decrease for PM
2.5
and local PPM
2.5
, respectively), compared with estimates in rural areas (2% decrease for PM
2.5
and 36% decrease for PPM
2.5
). We conclude that for the evaluation of the health impacts of air pollution, the resolution of the model computations is an important factor, which can potentially influence the predicted health impacts by tens of percent or more, especially when assessing the impacts of national emissions.
There is mixed evidence for an association between particulate matter air pollution and Parkinson's disease despite biological plausibility.
We studied the association between particulate air ...pollution, its components and Parkinson's disease (PD) risk.
We conducted a nested case-control study within the population of Finland using national registers. A total of 22,189 incident PD cases diagnosed between 1996 and 2015 were matched by age, sex and region with up to seven controls (n = 148,009) per case. Time weighted average air pollution exposure to particulate matter and its components was modelled at the residential addresses, accounting for move history, for the 16 years preceding diagnosis. Conditional logistic regression analysis was used to evaluate the association between air pollution and PD. Different exposure periods (6–16 years, 11–16 years, 5–10 years, 0–5 years) before the index date (date of PD diagnosis) were applied.
Time-weighted average exposures were relatively low at 12.1 ± 6.5 μg/m3 (mean ± SD) for PM10 and 7.7 ± 3.2 μg/m3 for PM2.5. No associations were found between PM2.5 or PM10 exposure 6–16 years before index date and PD (OR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.96, 1.02; per IQR of 3.9 μg/m3 and OR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.96, 1.01; per IQR of 7.8 μg/m3, respectively). However, inverse associations were observed for the same exposure period with black carbon (OR: 0.96; 95% CI: 0.93, 0.99; per IQR of 0.6 μg/m3), sulphate (OR: 0.79; 95% CI: 0.68, 0.92; per IQR of 1.2 μg/m3), secondary organic aerosols (OR: 0.86; 95% CI: 0.80, 0.93; per IQR of 0.1 μg/m3) and sea salt (OR: 0.92; 95% CI: 0.87, 0.98; per IQR of 0.1 μg/m3).
Low-level particulate matter air pollution was not associated with increased risk of incident PD in this Finnish nationwide population. The observed weak inverse associations with specific particle components should be investigated further.
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•Particulate matter was not associated with risk for Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.•Risk for Parkinson's disease did not differ by duration of exposure to particles.•Some PD components were associated with a practically non-meaningful decreased risk for Parkinson's disease.•We observed a decreasing temporal pattern in the association between air pollution and risk for Parkinson's disease.
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Atmospheric particles are a major environmental health risk. Assessments of air pollution related health burden are often based on outdoor concentrations estimated at residential locations, ignoring ...spatial mobility, time-activity patterns, and indoor exposures. The aim of this work is to quantify impacts of these factors on outdoor-originated fine particle exposures of school children.
We apply nested WRF-CAMx modelling of PM2.5 concentrations, gridded population, and school location data. Infiltration and enrichment factors were collected and applied to Athens, Kuopio, Lisbon, Porto, and Treviso. Exposures of school children were calculated for residential and school outdoor and indoor, other indoor, and traffic microenvironments. Combined with time-activity patterns six exposure models were created. Model complexity was increased incrementally starting from residential and school outdoor exposures.
Even though levels in traffic and outdoors were considerably higher, 80–84% of the exposure to outdoor particles occurred in indoor environments. The simplest and also commonly used approach of using residential outdoor concentrations as population exposure descriptor (model 1), led on average to 26% higher estimates (15.7 μg/m3) compared with the most complex model (# 6) including home and school outdoor and indoor, other indoor and traffic microenvironments (12.5 μg/m3). These results emphasize the importance of including spatial mobility, time-activity and infiltration to reduce bias in exposure estimates.
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•Exposure to outdoor PM2.5 varies considerably depending on the modelling approach.•Exposure occurs mainly indoors, although infiltration decreases the concentrations.•Inclusion of school and traffic microenvironments increased the exposure estimates.•Indoor-generated sources potentially important contributors to the total exposure.•Time-activity, spatial mobility and infiltration important in exposure modelling
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Health Impacts of Ambient Air Pollution in Finland Lehtomäki, Heli; Korhonen, Antti; Asikainen, Arja ...
International journal of environmental research and public health,
04/2018, Volume:
15, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Air pollution has been estimated to be one of the leading environmental health risks in Finland. National health impact estimates existing to date have focused on particles (PM) and ozone (O₃). In ...this work, we quantify the impacts of particles, ozone, and nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) in 2015, and analyze the related uncertainties. The exposures were estimated with a high spatial resolution chemical transport model, and adjusted to observed concentrations. We calculated the health impacts according to Word Health Organization (WHO) working group recommendations. According to our results, ambient air pollution caused a burden of 34,800 disability-adjusted life years (DALY). Fine particles were the main contributor (74%) to the disease burden, which is in line with the earlier studies. The attributable burden was dominated by mortality (32,900 years of life lost (YLL); 95%). Impacts differed between population age groups. The burden was clearly higher in the adult population over 30 years (98%), due to the dominant role of mortality impacts. Uncertainties due to the concentration-response functions were larger than those related to exposures.
Aims: In Finland, smoking rates in the general population are decreasing due to increased awareness of the adverse effects and tightened tobacco legislation. However, previous studies have shown that ...smoking in pregnant Finnish women remained as high as in the general Finnish female population at around 15% in 2010. Our aim was to describe temporal and spatial trends in smoking behaviour, and determinants of changes in smoking behaviour between first and second pregnancy. Methods: Self-reported smoking from the Finnish Medical Birth Register covered the years 1991–2015 (N=1,435,009). The association of maternal age and socioeconomic status with smoking rate was analysed. Spatial trends were assessed at municipality level. Results: The overall smoking rate during early pregnancy remained fairly stable at around 15% from 1991 to 2015, but increased in teenage and young women below 25 years of age. The mean smoking rate (36%) was higher in these age groups than in older pregnant women (11%). Through the study period the smoking rate remained higher in blue collar workers compared with higher socioeconomic groups. Between the first and second child, on average only 4% of women started to smoke and 41% quitted. Smoking rates developed less favourably in Eastern Finland. Conclusions: The observed increase in smoking rate during pregnancy in teenage and young women is concerning. Pregnancy is a trigger point for smoking cessation in a big fraction of pregnant women. More studies are needed to explain the opposite trends of smoking rates in Northern and Western Finland compared with Eastern Finland.
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Exposure to fine particles in ambient air has been estimated to be one of the leading environmental health risks in Finland. Residential wood combustion is the largest domestic source of fine ...particles, and there is increasing political interest in finding feasible measures to reduce those emissions. In this paper, we present the PM2.5 emissions from residential wood combustion in Finland, as well as the resulting concentrations. We used population-weighed concentrations in a 250 × 250 m grid as population exposure estimates, with which we calculated the disease burden of the emissions. Compared to a projected baseline scenario, we studied the effect of chosen reduction measures in several abatement scenarios. In 2015, the resulting annual average concentrations were between 0.5 and 2 µg/m3 in the proximity of most cities, and disease burden attributable to residential wood combustion was estimated to be 3400 disability-adjusted life years (DALY) and 200 deaths. Disease burden decreased by 8% in the 2030 baseline scenario and by an additional 63% in the maximum feasible reduction scenario. Informational campaigns and improvement of the sauna stove stock were assessed to be the most feasible abatement measures to be implemented in national air quality policies.
Air quality in Europe has been improving over the last decades. Notwithstanding, urban areas are still facing exceedances of the Air Quality Directive's limit and target values. In this study, we ...analyzed the effect of two mitigation measures on urban air quality: i) improvement of the biomass residential combustion appliances, and ii) electrification of passenger's cars fleet. Five European cities (Lisbon and Porto - Portugal, Athens - Greece, Kuopio - Finland, and Treviso - Italy) were used as case studies to evaluate the impact of the measures on the fine particle fraction (PM2.5) concentrations. To facilitate decision making and the quick test of new measures, the LIFE Index-Air tool was developed. In this tool, the air pollutant concentrations are predicted by Artificial Neural Networks trained using a set of air quality modelling simulations. The results indicate that the replacement of old biomass heating systems by new improved fireplaces can be more effective in Treviso. On the other hand, the replacement of gasoline and diesel passenger vehicles by electric ones seems to be more effective in reducing PM2.5 concentrations over Lisbon, Porto, and Athens. In Kuopio, both mitigation measures have an identical effect.
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•The scenario building module can quickly estimate PM2.5 concentrations.•In Athens, Porto and Lisbon, the focus should be on road traffic electrification.•In Kuopio and Treviso, the focus should be on residential combustion measures.•In addition to passenger vehicles, electrification of other vehicles is suggested.
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GEOZS, IJS, IMTLJ, KILJ, KISLJ, NLZOH, NUK, OILJ, PNG, SAZU, SBCE, SBJE, UILJ, UL, UM, UPCLJ, UPUK, ZAGLJ, ZRSKP
Abstract
Recently, the causal associations between traffic emissions and health effects were strengthened by the systematic reviews by the Health Effects Institute (HEI#23, 2022). According to ...EuroStat data Europeans spend 87-97% of their time indoors in homes, workplaces, schools and nurseries. Breathing volumes are dominated by the time spent indoors (16 m³ indoors and 1.4 m³ outdoors), even though breathing rates in outdoor environments are higher. This demonstrates the importance of taking into account time activity as well as infiltration to indoor spaces when estimating intake of particles.
The ULTRHAS project aims to link in vitro toxicological evidence for particulate matter to health impact assessments to look specifically into this. An integrated exposure pathway model will consider for different microenvironments, and physical activity patterns to quantify the particle intake in selected gender and age groups. Relative to the commonly applied approach using residential address and corresponding outdoor pollution levels we specifically add handling of (i) infiltration into indoor spaces and (ii) variability in breathing volumes based on physical activities. The model will provide inhalation volumes for selected target populations, to be applied in the intake-DALY estimation of burden of disease parameters in the following phases of the project.
This article summarizes an impact evaluation of the North Karelia Project (Finnish CINDI program) on smoking cessation attempts. During the period 1989-1996, data were collected by annual surveys, ...with response rates varying from 66% to 76%. This study included 1,694 adult current smokers or persons who had quit smoking during the past year, out of a total of 6,011 respondents. Smoking cessation attempts during the past 12 months were examined as a dependent variable. Reported exposures to mass media and interpersonal health communication were examined as possible determinants of smoking cessation. Weekly exposure to mass media health messages was significantly associated with cessation attempts among men only. In contrast, interpersonal health communication, or social influence, was a significant determinant of cessation attempts among both sexes. Exposure to both mass media and interpersonal health communication had an even stronger impact on cessation attempts. Thus, interpersonal communication appears to be an important catalyst of community programs, and its inclusion should be emphasized to obtain a higher impact with community programs.
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