Investigating the effect of air quality on health
A major EPSRC-funded project investigating the links between air quality and health is being led by a statistician from the department of Maths and the Southampton Statistical Sciences Research Institute (S3RI).
Dr Sujit Sahu
is heading up the interdisciplinary team that is developing and linking statistical models for air quality and health outcomes.
The £635,000 collaboration between the University of Southampton, the University of Glasgow and the UK Met Office, aims to build a statistically rigorous framework for linking exposure to air pollution and health.
Air pollution has been estimated to reduce average UK life expectancy by around six months with annual costs of £19b but quantifying how it affects human health is a challenging statistical problem.
The team of statisticians, air quality modellers, climate scientists and epidemiologists will also be supported by Visiting Researcher Professor Alan Gelfand, from Duke University, USA.
Results from the three-year project, which starts in January 2013, will inform government policies regarding air quality and environmental justice.
“An ambitious part of the project will evaluate the effect of exposure to air pollution on incidence of chronic diseases as a result of climate change, where the climate and resulting air quality will be projected to 2050 with the help of the Met Office,” said Sujit.