Environmental and Health surveillance of Air Quality in Chile

Abstract

Background: Chile is considered a model for Latin American and Caribbean Countries (LAC) due to its growing development. However, its environmental regulations and regulatory processes, especially for air pollutants, represent population health risks.Objective: discuss on the Chilean environmental and health surveillance system and its limitations to protect the children and general populational health. Results: Despite the strong national network air monitoring, 70% of the stations belong to the industries and are supervised by the environmental authorities. On the whole country, criteria pollutant levels show insignificant changes over the past 15 years. The comparison of national regulations for particles (PM10, PM2.5) with the WHO recommendations clearly shows that 80% of the population is at risk of getting sick or dying from these pollutants. In communities near fixed sources, such as thermoelectric plants that use fossil fuels, residents are unequally exposed to pollutants and children and older people present greater health risks.Recently, several regional decontamination plans have been started. But, in them, the most important interventions are focused on indoor sources (as wood for heating) and adaptations of isolation conditions at homes. No changes are projected on national regulations or more restricted emission limits. In health promotion and prevention diseases, no changes have been made regarding the index on air quality, risk communication or epidemiological surveillance on health sentinel events. It is estimated in Chile that the number of cases of mortality and morbidity attributable to actual levels of air pollution in Chile could be underestimated. ConclusionsIt is proposed to improve the quality of indicators that help estimate the disease burden, including exposure assessment and use of exposure-response functions to have more accurate and less undervalued estimates at least for criteria contaminants for effectively protecting the pediatric and elderly populations.