EMAPEC Project - Estimating Morbidity Attributable to Ambient Air Pollution and Its Economic Impacts

Air

thematic dossier

Air pollution affects the entire population. The levels of pollutants found in the atmosphere are linked to health risks, and any reduction in exposure to these pollutants would be beneficial.

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What is the EMAPEC project?

EMAPEC is a project created by the WHO to provide specialized technical support on the occurrence of chronic diseases (respiratory, cardiovascular, metabolic, etc.) resulting from exposure to ambient air pollution. The project aims to establish a method for ultimately estimating the economic impacts associated with these health effects.

This project first reviewed the epidemiological scientific literature on the occurrence of chronic diseases linked to ambient air pollution and selected the most robust and relevant concentration-risk functions. A review of systematic reviews titled “Choices of morbidity outcomes and concentration-response functions for health risk assessment of long-term exposure to air pollution” was published in the August 2024 issue of Environmental Epidemiology.

Case studies were then conducted to test the method at different geographic scales (regional, national, and global) and in different contexts, allowing for the exploration of challenges that may arise from a lack of relevant data.
This project is linked to the ongoing project by the WHO European Centre for Environment and Health aimed at updating concentration-risk functions for mortality in Europe (HRAPIE-2).

Experts from various institutions participated in the project. In particular, experts from Imperial College London (United Kingdom), Santé Publique France (France), the Aix-Marseille School of Economics - Aix-Marseille University - CNRS (France), the University of Copenhagen (Denmark), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) (Austria), the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (United Kingdom), the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research - CONICET (Argentina), the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness (Argentina), and the Ministry of Public Health (Thailand).

How did Santé publique France contribute to this project?

Santé publique France contributed to the EMAPEC project by conducting a case study at the national level in mainland France, a second at the regional level (Hauts-de-France), in collaboration with INERIS, Atmo Hauts-de-France, Airparif (on the modeling of exposure indicators), and the Aix-Marseille School of Economics - Aix-Marseille University - CNRS (on the economic component). A third French case study was conducted by ORS Ile-de-France, covering the Greater Paris metropolitan area, in coordination with Santé publique France.

The results of these studies will soon be made available by the WHO.

Following this work, Santé publique France conducted a new quantitative health impact assessment (EQIS) on morbidity in mainland France, broken down by region (excluding overseas departments and regions) for the period 2016–2019. Through this study, the impact of the population’s exposure to ambient air pollution was assessed on the development of eight diseases with a scientifically proven link to exposure to PM2.5 and/or NO2, namely:

  • Respiratory diseases: lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in adults; asthma in children and adults; and pneumonia and other acute lower respiratory tract infections (excluding influenza) in children;

  • cardiovascular diseases: stroke, acute myocardial infarction, and hypertension in adults;

  • Metabolic: type 2 diabetes in adults.

View the full results of the EQIS Morbidity France project—Estimation of morbidity due to ambient air pollution and its economic impacts in mainland France, 2016–2019