Air pollution is the largest single environmental health risk and a leading cause of disease and death globally. In the WHO European Region alone, about 700 000 premature deaths in 2021 were attributable to the joint effects of household and ambient air pollution.
As a support to health protection policies and measures, version 2.2 of WHO/Europe’s AirQ+ tool features improved functions for estimating the health effects of exposure to the most relevant air pollutants. AirQ+ can be used, with some limitations, for cities, countries or regions worldwide to answer the following questions:
- How much of a particular health effect is attributable to selected air pollutants?
- Compared to the current scenario, what would be the change in health effects if air pollution levels changed in the future?
What’s new in version 2.2?
The main features of version 2.2 include:
- new default cut-off values and risk functions based on the 2021 “WHO global air quality guidelines: particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide”;
- a new Global Exposure Mortality Model (GEMM) for adult mortality (non-accidental deaths from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) – that is, deaths from NCDs not due to road traffic injuries – and all deaths from acute lower respiratory infections);
- updated functions for integrated exposure risk (IER), including the IER function used by WHO for the latest calculation of the air pollution burden of disease;
- a new “Archived Calculation Methods” button, allowing access to all previously used IER functions;
- improved life table calculation that now manages data by sex;
- improved output charts; and
- updated documentation embedded in the software (the “What is AirQ+” file).
AirQ+ is available in English, French, German and Russian. Since its launch in 2016, more than 1000 users from 112 countries have downloaded the software, which has been used in over 300 cities.