Abstract
Air Quality Health Index (AQHI) is a scale designed in Canada to help residences understand the impact of air quality on health. This study investigated temporal variability of daily AQHI and impact of regional transport on AQHI in Windsor, Ontario, Canada from 2016 to 2019. The four-year average daily AQHI was 2.9, slightly below the upper limit of the low health risk level of 3. AQHI value decreased from 2.95 to 2.81 during the study period, indicating the improvement of air quality. Half of the days, AQHI were 3 regardless of season. AQHI was higher in the warm season (3.1) than in the cold season (2.6) due to more frequent moderate risk days (27%, AQHI = 4) in warm season and more frequent low risk days (42%, AQHI = 2) in the cold season. Among the three pollutants considered, O3 was the most frequently reported dominant contributor to daily AQHI (88% of days), followed by NO2 (12%), especially in the cold season, with small contribution from PM2.5 (<1%). Trajectory analysis found that AQHI ≤ 3 days were closely associated with air masses from the north and northwest, whereas AQHI > 3 days were closely associated with air masses from the west and southwest. This is because northerly flows brought in clear air mass owing to less industrial facilities. Polluted air masses were transported from the south of Windsor, where several industrial states of the US were located. Directional AQHI resembles O3 more than NO2 or PM2.5 concentrations do. Further improvement of AQHI in Windsor could be challenging because O3 concentrations have continued to increase in recent years. Thus, more effective control measures to mitigate O3 pollution are warranted to reduce its impact on human health and the environment.
Highlights
Air pollution is the biggest environmental risk to human health
Recent studies have observed those adverse health effects occurring at low concentration levels, suggesting no safe exposure levels, even at the otherwise considered relatively clean areas [3]
As outlined in an Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) report [4], six air pollutants were considered in air quality index (AQI) in Canada
Summary
Air pollution is the biggest environmental risk to human health. Approximately 90% of the world population breathes air that does not meet the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines [1]. Major health effects include respiratory and cardiovascular illness through both short-term and long-term exposure to air pollution. As outlined in an Ontario Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) report [4], six air pollutants were considered in air quality index (AQI) in Canada. They are fine particulate matter (PM2.5), ground-level ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfur dioxides (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO) and total reduced sulfur compounds (TRS). The AQI is reported as the number corresponding to the concentration of a pollutant that is highest relative to its standard. There are three key weaknesses associated with the AQI: (1) the inability to capture the overall health effects of multiple pollutants due to reliance on the worst offending pollutant, (2) the inability to reflect the apparent no-threshold concentration-response relationship between air pollution and human health, and (3) a lack of well-developed health messages [3,5,7]
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