Human Health Risk Assessment Due to Air Pollution in the Megacity Mumbai in India

Abstract

This study evaluated the human health risk in terms of the excess number of mortality and morbidity in the megacity Mumbai, India due to air pollution. AirQ software was used to enumerate the various health impacts of critical pollutants in Mumbai in past 22 years during 1992-2013. A relationship concept based on concentration-response relative risk and population attributable-risk proportion was employed by adopting World Health Organization (WHO) guideline for concentrations of air pollutants like PM10, SO2 and NO2. For the year 1992 in Mumbai, it was observed that excess number of cases of total mortality, cardiovascular mortality, respiratory mortality, hospital admission due to COPD, respiratory disease and cardiovascular disease were 8420, 4914, 889, 149, 10568 and 4081 respectively. However, after 22 years these figures increased to 15872, 9962, 1628, 580, 20527 and 7905 respectively, but all of these reached maximum in the year 2006. From the result, it is also noted that except COPD morbidity the excess number of cases from 1992-2002 to 2003-2013 increased almost by 30%; and the excess number of mortality and morbidity is basically due to particulate matter (PM10) than due to gaseous pollutants.

Keywords

• human health risk
• criteria pollutants
• mortality
• morbidity
• relative risk