Definition of Novel Health and Air Pollution Index Based on Short Term Exposure and Air Concentration Levels

Health impact assessment has become important in the development of air quality policies and in finding the relationships between pollutants concentration and health effects. In our work we presented a novel index able to evaluate the effects on the human exposure caused by ambient air pollution in urban areas. The index is able to link both health risk factors and pollutants levels. The indexes is of additive type and is composed by two terms: the former is based on pollutants concentration and is connected with EPA air quality index (AQI), while the latter is composed by an adimensional term based on the exposure levels. We tested the methodology using PM10 as studied pollutants. The spatial and temporal variation of its health impact was evaluated by means of index maps applying the above methodology in the city of Rome during three selected episodes. Our study shows index maps for all episodes linked to population and to pollutants.