A preliminary assessment of the health impacts of indoor air contaminants determined using the DALY metric

Abstract

Common metrics used for assessing air quality are based on guidelines and/or standards for regulating concentrations that should not be exceeded over a period. Exceeding those values would represent problematic situations. A lack of agreement on appropriate norms or standards deems this approach sub-optimal. Moreover, this approach does not relate a proportion of exceedance to specific health outcomes. A need to develop health-centered IAQ metrics that can quantify burden of disease in terms of epidemiological evidence of population morbidity and mortality supported by the best knowledge of health effects, is pressing. This work proposes an approach that harnesses the advantages of using disability adjusted life years (DALYs) as a valuable metric to quantify and rank the burden of household air pollution, as a global perspective. Two methods were used to compute DALYs, one mainly based on incidence data and another mainly based on effect factors (i.e. DALYs per unit-intake of contaminant of interest). The methods are based on the following parameters: risk estimates, baseline incidence rates, damage factors, indoor air contaminant concentrations, human toxicological & epidemiological effect factors, dose–response factors, cancer-related variables and breathing rates. Systematic searches and reviews of peer-reviewed literature (including systematic reviews and meta-analyses) were performed to find information on said input parameters. Meta-analysis was used to pooled and synthesise data from different studies. A Monte Carlo approach was used to model results in DALYs lost. Over 1000 articles were revised and overall ∼200 unique sources were used as sources of data. Ten contaminants were accounted for with specific risk estimates and damage factors data, for which human epidemiological effect factors were derived. Representative concentrations of 45 contaminants were calculated. Thirty-nine contaminants were accounted for human toxicological effect factors. Total pooled DALYs were estimated per 100,000 exposed population with corresponding uncertainty intervals. Estimated population-averaged annual cost, in DALYs lost, of chronic air contaminant inhalation in dwellings indicate that the contaminants with highest median DALY loss estimates are PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 (magnitudes of 10³); PM_coarse, formaldehyde and NO₂ could be found with magnitudes of 10²; contaminants with magnitudes of 10¹ include radon and ozone, finally SO₂ and acrolein would have magnitudes of 10°; mould-related bioaerosols could be of interest as well. The updated strategies allowed for the quantification of contaminants and health outcomes that were not accounted for in previous works. Computed DALYs have lower uncertainty intervals than those previously proposed. The updated methodology presented in this study may be used to assess cumulative health impacts of indoor air contaminants.

Keywords:

• DALYs
• IAQ
• health
• dwellings

Acknowledgement

This study was supported by a University of Nottingham Faculty of Engineering Research Excellence Scholarship and partially supported by Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 A unit-intake could be kg, Bq, or colony forming units (CFU).

Additional information

Funding

Morantes is supported by a University of Nottingham Faculty of Engineering Research Excellence Scholarship to do this work. Jones received funding from the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (CIBSE) to do this work. Non-financial interests: Jones, Molina, and Sherman are unpaid members of the ASHRAE 62.2 indoor air quality working group.