Objectives: We evaluated studies that used the World Health Organization's (WHO) AirQ and AirQ+ tools for air pollution (AP) health risk assessment (HRA) and provided best practice suggestions for future assessments.
Methods: We performed a comprehensive review of studies using WHO's AirQ and AirQ+ tools, searching several databases for relevant articles, reports, and theses from inception to Dec 31, 2022.
Results: We identified 286 studies that met our criteria. The studies were conducted in 69 countries, with most (57%) in Iran, followed by Italy and India (∼8% each). We found that many studies inadequately report air pollution exposure data, its quality, and validity. The decisions concerning the analysed population size, health outcomes of interest, baseline incidence, concentration-response functions, relative risk values, and counterfactual values are often not justified, sufficiently. Many studies lack an uncertainty assessment.
Conclusion: Our review found a number of common shortcomings in the published assessments. We suggest better practices and urge future studies to focus on the quality of input data, its reporting, and associated uncertainties.
Keywords: AirQ; WHO; air pollution; burden of disease; health risk assessment.
Copyright © 2024 Amini, Yousefian, Faridi, Andersen, Calas, Castro, Cervantes-Martínez, Cole-Hunter, Corso, Dragic, Evangelopoulos, Gapp, Hassanvand, Kim, Le Tertre, Medina, Miller, Montero, Requia, Riojas-Rodriguez, Rojas-Rueda, Samoli, Texcalac-Sangrador, Yitshak-Sade, Schwartz, Kuenzli, Spadaro, Krzyzanowski and Mudu.