An Examination on the Worldwide Relationship between Ambient PM2.5 Concentration and Air Pollution-Attributable Deaths

With increasing levels of air pollution comes an overabundance of new health concerns, many of which are specifically due to the growing concentrations of Particulate Matter (PM 2.5). The ultrafine size of PM 2.5 allows it to infiltrate the respiratory system on an extremely damaging level by penetrating the lungs and infecting the bloodstream**. Using the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Health Observatory (GHO) data collected in 2016, we explored the global relationship between the ambient PM 2.5 concentration and mortality in terms of five different causes of death: 1) lower respiratory infections, 2) trachea, bronchus, lung cancers, 3) ischaemic heart disease (IHD), 4) stroke, 5) chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. While the percentage of deaths due to air pollution unsurprisingly increases as PM 2.5 levels increased, the percentage of some individual causes of death (which make up the total) had an inverse relationship with PM 2.5 levels. One case of this relationship can be observed in the 2016 WHO GHO data which shows that the percentage of deaths attributed IHD (also commonly termed as coronary artery disease) in relation to total mortality due to PM 2.5 generally increases with decreasing PM 2.5 concentration. This would suggest a weak correlation between PM 2.5 concentration and IHD, as compared to the other causes of death attributed to PM 2.5. We will also present causes at each country level and attempt to link the PM2.5 concentration and its related death causes to country’s particular features, for example gross domestic product per capita. While much research has been done concerning the relationship between PM 2.5, death rates, and GDP, trends between the specific causes of death have not been explored.