Modelos de efeitos mistos para previsão da poluição do ar: Avaliação global da mortalidade atribuível à poluição do ar nas regiões metropolitanas do Brasil.

Abstract

The largest sources of the air pollutants are the burning of fuels from stationary sources (power plants and electric power) and mobile sources (fleet of motor vehicles). Most of these sources is concentrated in the large cities, where significant health impacts are expected, principally in relation to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. Exposure to air pollutants, especially particulate matter, is associated with several health effects, but the effects on the mortality are undoubtedly the most important and are more favorable overall assessment. Quantifying the magnitude of the impact air pollution on healthy in large cities presents considerable challenges due to limited availability of information. This thesis presents two studies. The first deals with methodological aspects on the prediction of concentration of particulate matter in urban areas where there aren t air quality monitoring networks. The method used was the Linear Mixed-Effects Models for prediction of annual averages of inhalable particulate matter with diameter ≤ 10μm (PM10) in the period from 2001 to 2014 in the metropolitan areas of Brazil. The methodology was based on the model proposed by Cohen et al. (2004), developed by the World Bank, to estimate PM10 concentrations in terms of economic, meteorological, demographic and other characteristics of metropolitan regions. The results showed that only the relative air humidity, GDP per capita of the services sector, average altitude and fires were associated with PM10 concentration levels. The objective of the second study was to estimate the mortality burden in the metropolitan regions as whole, using mixed-effects models applied to two specific disease groups and age groups: Cardiovascular diseases in adults with 30 years or older and respiratory diseases in children under one year and from one to five years. We estimated the number of attributable deaths and Years of Life Lost (YLL) for adults using risk estimates from an American Cancer Society cohort study. And regarding the one-year and one-to-five-year age groups, the risk estimates considered were taken from meta-analytical study of the project - Multicity Study of Air Pollution and Mortality in Latin America (the ESCALA Study).