Background:Air pollution health risk assessment (HRA) has been typically conducted for all causes and cause-specific mortality based on concentration–response functions (CRFs) from meta-analyses that synthesize the evidence on air pollution health effects. There is a need for a similar systematic approach for HRA for morbidity outcomes, which have often been omitted from HRA of air pollution, thus...

Chronic exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) poses a major global health risk, commonly assessed by assuming equivalent toxicity for different PM2.5 constituents. We used a data-informed global atmospheric model and recent exposure–response functions to calculate the health burden of ambient PM2.5 from ten source categories. We estimate 4.23 (95% confidence interval 3.0–6.14) million excess...

Designing air quality policies that improve public health can benefit from information about air pollution health risks and impacts, which include respiratory and cardiovascular diseases and premature death. Several computer-based tools help automate air pollution health impact assessments and are being used for a variety of contexts. Expanding information gathered for a May 2014 World Health Orga...

The Global Health Observatory (GHO) serves as the World Health Organization's primary portal for accessing comprehensive health-related statistics across its 194 Member States. It offers open access to over 1,000 key indicators spanning critical areas such as mortality, the burden of diseases, health systems, environmental health, infectious and noncommunicable diseases, and health equity.The port...

Background: Continuous ambient air quality monitoring in Kenya has been limited, resulting in a sparse data base on the health impacts of air pollution for the country. Authors have operated a centrally located monitor in Nairobi for measuring fine particulate matter (PM2.5), the pollutant that has demonstrated impact on health. Here, authors describe the temporal levels and trends in PM2.5 d...

Earthdata Search is NASA’s map-based web portal for discovering, visualizing, and accessing Earth science data across the EOSDIS system. It enables efficient searches—over 1.8 billion observations—via spatial, temporal, and keyword filters, powered by the Common Metadata Repository and illustrated through GIBS map imagery. Users can preview datasets, then download or customize data using direct do...

Objectives: Authors evaluated studies that used the World Health Organization’s (WHO) AirQ and AirQ+ tools for air pollution (AP) health risk assessment (HRA) and provided best practice suggestions for future assessments.Methods: Authors performed a comprehensive review of studies using WHO’s AirQ and AirQ+ tools, searching several databases for relevant articles, reports, and theses from inceptio...

This presentation was delivered during the Early-Career Training on Air Pollution and Health organised in 2024 by ICIMOD, CAPHER-India, and the Health Effects Institute in Kathmandu, Nepal.It covers:Policy questions that Health Risk Assessment (HRA) of air pollution answersMeasures of risk in population (RR, PAF, number of attributed cases, YLL, DALY)Main elements of risk assessmentUncertainties a...

The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model is a state of the art mesoscale numerical weather prediction system designed for both atmospheric research and operational forecasting applications. It features two dynamical cores, a data assimilation system, and a software architecture supporting parallel computation and system extensibility. The model serves a wide range of meteorological applica...

Air pollution is an escalating issue in cities worldwide, with direct impacts on public health.While many numerical tools exist to address this problem, there is a growing need for practical, scalable, and accessible modeling training resources, particularly in low- and middle-income countries. This publication is specifically designed to support those training needs and empower city managers, reg...