Whilst the subject of the interplay between air quality and health is so fascinating, it is still rather than solved!
It is mandatory to focus our work on a number of open gaps, which are more likely to help us improving our understanding.
We've tried to summarise these in the abstract of the conference session and special issue. However, still, there is the need to transform that general overview into specific questions.
Your view and feedbacks are welcome!
According to me, one of the most important gap in air quality is the lack of full recognition of emerging pollutants and issues. Too much importance are given to ozone, PM2.5 and No2 whereas other pollutants have very high toxicity.
More information could be found in my literature overview recently published in the Journal of Air and Waste Management Assoc.
Thank you, Alain, for replying. It is a very interesting paper, indeed. I must say that I fully agree with the approach there proposed.
Health and mortality effects are generally calculated based on daily averages of ambient concentrations of key pollutants. The healthy thresholds are defined based on 24h averages which can be breached in a number of ways, say, all 24 hours of a day can be moderately polluted, or just 1 out of 24 hours can be extremely polluted, enough to bring the daily average above the threshold. Let's say the 24h avg concentration turns out to be the same in both cases. Will both lead to the same health effects and mortality? I suppose, it will depend on the lifestyle of individuals. What if most population were indoors during this polluted hour and didn't experience the true ambient concentrations? This is a source of significant uncertainty!
Thanks, Tabir, for the reply.
I fully agree on the importance to consider time-scales relevant for the compound(s) suspected to have health effects.
In regard to the atmospheric aerosol, the commonly used 24-hour averages for PM2.5 mass concentrations, may be (very often) not enough to catch the health-related problem.
I do support a revision of the currently used air quality standards for PM2.5. It is critical here to reach a consensus about the metrics to be used , which are most suited to indicate health effects. Then, the time scale shall be selected, and I hope the selection goes towards minute-to-hour data resolution.
FYI: We are working on this topic (CARE experiment)
Hi all,
I have discovered and described one fundamental gap in current knowledge.
It concerns the problem that unusually high underestimation of deposition efficiency of inhaled pollutants is typical for most classical studies and approaches when it used in cold or wet seasons.
Despite the publication in one in a respected magazine - absolutely no one notices this problem and does not want to notice / - and it really kills me/
Article Influence of weather and seasonal variations in temperature ...
Highlights
• Most studies do not consider the possibility of supersaturation in airways.
• Cold, rainy or wet weather can induce supersaturated conditions in airways.
• Supersaturation can lead to enhanced deposition of inhaled ambient aerosols.
•
Abstract
In this review, all available data on the effects of supersaturation in human airways were summarized and analysed, and the most critical parameters identified. The analysis shows the boundary conditions for increased supersaturation in airways: inhalation of cold air of T
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