[Exposure assessment of air pollution in Italy 2016-2019 for future studies on air pollution and COVID-19]

Abstract

Air pollution is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, with adverse effects related both to short-term and long-term exposure. It has also recently been linked to COVID-19 pandemic. To analyze this possible association in Italy, studies on the entire area of the peninsula are necessary, both urban and non-urban areas. Therefore, there is a need for a homogeneous and applicable exposure assessment tool throughout the country.Experiences of high spatio-temporal resolution models for Italian territory already exist for PM estimation, using space-time predictors, satellite data, air quality monitoring data.This work completes the availability of these estimations for the most recent years (2016-2019) and is also applied to nitrogen oxides and ozone. The spatial resolution is 1x1 km.The model confirms its capability of capturing most of PM variability (R2=0.78 and 0.74 for PM10 e PM2.5, respectively), and provides reliable estimates also for ozone (R2=0.76); for NO2 the model performance is lower (R2=0.57). The model estimations were used to calculate the PWE (population-weighted exposure) as the annual mean, weighted on the resident population in each individual cell, which represents the estimation of the Italian population's chronic exposure to air pollution.These estimates are ready to be used in studies on the association between chronic exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 pathology, as well as for investigations on the role of air pollution on the health of the Italian population.

Keywords: air pollution; random-forest models; population-weighted exposure; COVID-19.