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Review
. 2018 Mar 1;15(3):427.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph15030427.

A Narrative Review on the Human Health Effects of Ambient Air Pollution in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Urgent Need for Health Effects Studies

Eric Coker  1 , Samuel Kizito  2
Affiliations
Review

A Narrative Review on the Human Health Effects of Ambient Air Pollution in Sub-Saharan Africa: An Urgent Need for Health Effects Studies

Eric Coker et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

An important aspect of the new sustainable development goals (SDGs) is a greater emphasis on reducing the health impacts from ambient air pollution in developing countries. Meanwhile, the burden of human disease attributable to ambient air pollution in sub-Saharan Africa is growing, yet estimates of its impact on the region are possibly underestimated due to a lack of air quality monitoring, a paucity of air pollution epidemiological studies, and important population vulnerabilities in the region. The lack of ambient air pollution epidemiologic data in sub-Saharan Africa is also an important global health disparity. Thousands of air pollution health effects studies have been conducted in Europe and North America, rather than in urban areas that have some of the highest measured air pollution levels in world, including urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, we provide a systematic and narrative review of the literature on ambient air pollution epidemiological studies that have been conducted in the region to date. Our review of the literature focuses on epidemiologic studies that measure air pollutants and relate air pollution measurements with various health outcomes. We highlight the gaps in ambient air pollution epidemiological studies conducted in different sub-regions of sub-Saharan Africa and provide methodological recommendations for future environmental epidemiology studies addressing ambient air pollution in the region.

Keywords: ambient air pollution; epidemiology; narrative review; sub-Saharan Africa.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Map of study area and locations of individual-level AAP epidemiology studies. Countries with individual-level AAP epidemiology studies are indicated with diagonal grey lines and the respective study author and citation number provided for each studied country.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Total number of published ambient air pollution (AAP) epidemiology studies included in the review by year (x-axis).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Distribution of types of study by health outcome categories. The smaller pie chart represents the number of mortality outcomes examined within the three different mortality studies identified in our review of the literature.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Distribution of types of respiratory outcomes examined for those classified as respiratory studies.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

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