The use of air criteria pollutants in analysing long-term exposure health risks

Recent epidemiological studies evidenced that exposure to ambient air pollution is linked to several health outcomes from morbidity to mortality. National regulations define air quality standards for the so called ‘criteria pollutants’ and a reduction of these threshold levels is scheduled in order to obtain health benefits. In spite of several uncertainties typical of these kind of epidemiological studies, a number of authors proposed concentration-response functions to predict the health effects linked to the presence of criteria pollutants in air. A case-study examines the C-R functions applicability and compares different studies available in literature. In particular health benefits are analyzed as a consequence of NOx and PM10 concentrations reduction.