A Quantitative Risk Assessment Method Based on Population and Exposure Distributions Using Australian Air Quality Data

Abstract

This paper develops a practical probabilistic method for assessing aggregate population health risks from different types of population exposures. The method consists of calculating the product of two functions: a population-weighted distribution of concentrations and a concentration-response distribution. This operation yields the corresponding aggregated health-risk distribution function. The method can use alternative exposure-response distributions and populations-specific exposure patterns, depending on the context of the assessment. A deterministic sensitivity analysis is included in the methodological aspects of this research. The distributions of concentrations are generated by combining area-specific population densities with atmospheric concentrations for each of the areas where exposure to air pollutants occurs. The exposure-response functions are developed from the literature. The method is exemplified using alternative exposure probabilities to carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter (PM10), and exposure-response models developed specifically for these pollutants for assessing health risks, and applied to data from a number of Australian cities. The results, which hold when the functions are monotonic, show single maximum per pollutant, regardless of the choice of exposure and exposure-response distribution. Although those maxima are often below the Australian Air Pollution Standards there are instances when this is not the case.