Exhaustion

In our study, we examined the possible modification of the heat effects on total and cause-specific mortality by air pollution at municipality level in the Attica region, Greece, during the warm period of the years 2000 to 2016. Our results support the evidence of elevated heat effects on mortality at higher levels of PM10 and 8 h max O3. Under climate change, any policy lowering air pollution levels will yield significant public health benefits.

Background: The epidemiological evidence on the interaction between heat and ambient air pollution on mortality is still inconsistent.

This article investigates the interaction between heat and ambient air pollution on daily mortality in a large dataset of 620 cities from 36 countries.

Ambient air pollution is a major global public health risk factor. There is now broad consensus that exposure to air pollution causes an array of adverse health effects based on evidence from a large scientific literature that has grown exponentially since the mid-1990s. Air pollution damages most organ systems and is linked to many debilitating diseases, such as asthma, cardiovascular diseases, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pneumonia, stroke, diabetes, lung cancer, and dementia.

Feedbacks between air pollutants and meteorology play a crucial role in the direction of the response of future climate and air pollution. These feedbacks are important to understand and quantify the potential impact of adaptation and mitigation policies setup for protecting the population against air pollution and heat stress.

The effects of short-term exposure to increased temperature on mortality are known, mostly based on time-series studies of city-wide data, whereas the evidence on temperature- air pollution interaction is limited. We investigated the association of short-term exposure to high temperatures with mortality in the Attica prefecture, Greece, by municipality, in the warm period (May-September) during 2000-2016, assessing daily air pollution exposure as effect modifier.

The associations between ambient coarse particulate matter (PM2.5–10) and daily mortality are not fully understood globally. We collected daily mortality (total, cardiovascular, and respiratory) and air pollution data from 205 cities in 20 countries/regions. This study provides novel global evidence on the robust and independent associations between short-term exposure to ambient PM2.5–10 and total, cardiovascular, and respiratory mortality, suggesting the need to establish a unique guideline or regulatory limit for daily concentrations of PM2.5–10.

Previous studies have reported a decrease in air pollution levels following the enforcement of lockdown measures during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these investigations were mostly based on simple pre-post comparisons using past years as a reference and did not assess the role of different policy interventions. This study contributes to knowledge by quantifying the association between specific lockdown measures and the decrease in NO2, O3, PM2.5, and PM10 levels across 47 European cities.