Increasing both crop productivity and the tolerance of crops to abiotic and biotic stresses is a major challenge for global food security in our rapidly changing climate. For the first time, authors show how the spatial variation and severity of tropospheric ozone effects on yield compare with effects of other stresses on a global scale, and discuss mitigating actions against the negative effects ...

This study estimates the potential losses of vascular plant species richness due to terrestrial acidification for different world's biomes. We used empirical occurrence data of 2409 species from 140 studies and estimated the relative species richness – pH response curves using logistic regressions. The regressions were then used to quantify the fraction of species that are potentially lost due to ...

Background:Air pollution risk assessments do not generally quantify health impacts using multipollutant risk estimates, but instead use results from single-pollutant or copollutant models. Multipollutant epidemiological models account for pollutant interactions and joint effects but can be computationally complex and data intensive. Risk estimates from multipollutant studies are therefore challeng...

Objective: To conduct a health impact assessment (HIA) to quantify health benefits for several PM and O3 air pollution reduction scenarios in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA). Results from this HIA will contribute to the scientific support of the MCMA air quality management plan (PROAIRE) for the period 2011-2020.Materials and methods: The HIA methodology consisted of four steps: 1) select...

This article illustrates how a health impact assessment (HIA) can be used to promote a collaborative discussion among stakeholders as part of a local action plan aimed at improving air quality. We performed a HIA of the mortality impacts of long-term exposure to fine particles PM2.5 in the Arve Valley in France. This narrow valley can experience high levels of pollution mostly during winter. Howev...

Ambient air pollution represents one of the biggest environmental risks to health. In this study, authors estimated the avoidable mortality burden attributable to ambient air pollution in Tehran, and derived the economic impact associated with these health effects. Using PM2.5 data from ground-level air pollution measurements in Tehran, they estimated PM2.5 exposure for 349 neighborhoods in Tehran...

In this study, two different air quality impact assessment methodologies were adopted and combined with a sensitivity analysis to estimate the unit costs. Air pollution health impact (mortality) assessment was carried out using one methodology based on log-linear concentration response functions (CRF) and another relying on the integrated exposure response curve (IER) from the Global Burden of Dis...

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...