Health Impact Assessment of PM10 and PM2.5 in 27 Southeast and East Asian Cities.

Abstract

We aimed to evaluate the annual health impacts of particulate matter (PM) less than 10 μm diameter (PM10) and less than 2.5-μm diameter (PM2.5) in 27 cities in Southeast and East Asian countries (Japan, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Vietnam) for the year 2009 (n = 50,756,699). We estimated the number of cases attributable to long-term exposure. We used a scenario that reduced the annual mean values for PM10 and PM2.5 to 20 and 10 μg/m, respectively. A reduction in long-term exposure to PM10 and PM2.5 would have postponed 8% to 9% of all-cause mortality or about 37,000 deaths. One third of them were associated with cardiopulmonary mortality and one ninth of them were associated with lung cancer mortality. Current air pollution levels in Southeast and East Asian countries have a nonnegligible public health impact.