Effects of air pollution and meteorological parameters on human health in the city of Athens, Greece

The aim of this study is to quantify the impacts of air pollution and meteorological parameters on human morbidity and to test whether different model specifications and approaches yield different results. Generalised additive and linear models along with monthly time series data for CO, NO, NO2, SO2, O3, average/maximum/minimum air temperature, relative humidity and atmospheric pressure are employed in order to investigate their association with three indicators of morbidity (circulatory diseases, respiratory diseases and skin diseases) in the city of Athens, Greece, for the period January 1987 December 1999. Our results indicate that an exacerbation in pollution levels of SO2 significantly increase the number of circulatory diseases. Similarly, increases in NO and O3 are found to augment the number of respiratory diseases, while the number of skin diseases is shown to be risen by an increase in CO concentrations only. Moreover, we find both air pollution and air temperature to be significantly associated with all human health indicators. This work highlights the need for lower air pollution standards for the city of Athens and a wider climate change policy.