Attribution of Health Hazards to Sources of Air Pollution Based on Networks of Sensors and Emission Inventories

Air pollution is monitored worldwide through networks of sensors. They provide information on local air pollution, which also provides a basis for a multitude of research. To reduce health hazards caused by air pollution, the concentrations of pollutants as measured by sensors need to be apportioned to particular sources. Although several methods to achieve this have been developed, only a few works on the contributions of pollution sources to health hazards are available in the literature. In this work, a simple scheme is proposed to compare health hazards from each of the main sources of air pollution in a given country, region, or area. The comparison involves the main air pollutants of PM_2.5, NO₂, and O₃ for chronic exposures and PM_2.5, NO₂, O₃, and SO₂ for acute exposures. The actual health hazard from each substance is determined from concentrations measured by sensors and the concentration–response functions found in the literature. The apportionment of substances to sources is based on emission inventories, thus avoiding costly methods of source apportionment. This method has been applied to the entire country, i.e., Poland, yielding the average proportion of health hazards from particular sources. The example demonstrates the flexibility and ease of application of the scheme. Uncertainties in the results were subjected to discussion. The key advantage of the scheme lies in its ability to provide an indication of the most harmful sources of pollution, thus highlighting efficient interventions.