An aggregate public health indicator to represent the impact of multiple environmental exposures

Abstract

We present a framework to aggregate divergent health impacts associated with different types of environmental exposures, such as air pollution, residential noise, and large technologic risks. From the policy maker's point of view, there are at least three good reasons for this type of aggregation: comparative risk evaluation (for example, setting priorities), evaluation of the efficiency of environmental policies in terms of health gain, and characterizing health risk associated with geographical accumulation of multiple environmental exposures. The proposed impact measure integrates three important dimensions of public health: life expectancy, quality of life, and number of people affected. Time is the unit of measurement. "Healthy life years" are either lost by premature death or by loss of quality of life, measured as discounted life years within a population. Severity weights (0 for perfect health, 1 for death) are assigned to discount the time spent with conditions associated with environmental exposures. We combined information on population exposure distribution, exposure response relations, incidence, and prevalence rates to estimate annual numbers of people affected and the duration of the condition, including premature death. Using data from the fourth Dutch National Environmental Outlook, we estimated that the long-term effects of particulate air pollution account for almost 60% of the total environment-related health loss in the Netherlands as modeled here. Environmental noise accounts for 24%, indoor air pollution (environmental tobacco smoke, radon, and dampness, as well as lead in drinking water) for around 6%, and food poisoning (or infection) for more than 3%. The contribution of this set of environmental exposures to the total annual burden of disease in the Netherlands is less than 5%.