Retrospective health impact assessment for ozone pollution in Mexico City from 1991 to 2011

Air pollution is the main environmental issue in Mexico City, where ozone is one of the most damaging pollutants for human health. In this work we present a retrospective health impact assessment (HIA) study split up by age groups for evaluating the benefits of ozone regulatory strategies from 1991 to 2011 in Mexico City. Since people move from one place to another during the day, which may affect their potential exposure to pollutants, we consider time-dependant spatial population distributions during the day. Ozone data is made up of observations taken with hourly frequency from January 1, 1991 to December 31, 2011, at approximately 22 stations of the monitoring network of Mexico City. Interpolated values for unknown locations are also taken into account in the HIA. The Cressman objective analysis method is applied for interpolating the observed ozone concentrations from monitoring stations to grids of convenient resolution. We demonstrate that different age groups present different spatial patterns of exposure, being the working-age people (between 18 and 64 years) the most benefited. We also confirm the hypothesis that, in general, people move to less polluted regions during the day.