Health impact assessment of air pollution: AirQ+ multiple-area data input

ABSTRACT

AirQ+ is a software tool for quantifying the health burden and impact of air pollution developed by the WHO Regional Office for Europe. AirQ+ includes methodologies to assess the impacts of short- and long-term exposure to ambient air pollution. The main methodologies use evidence generated by epidemiological cohort studies showing a relationship between average long-term air pollution concentration levels and the mortality risks in exposed populations. Assessing the impact of air pollution is suggested when evaluating the consequences of policies and interventions or of hypothetical scenarios. AirQ+ should always be used with the support of an epidemiologist or air pollution impact assessment expert. To facilitate users in their analyses, AirQ+ comes with manuals that require increasing levels of expertise. This manual introduces routine users of AirQ+ to the analysis of the impact of air pollution on public health when considering data from multiple areas. The new multiple-area input functionalities of AirQ+ are useful when analysing not just a single area but many areas (for example, several countries, regions, subregions, cities) for a comprehensive assessment.