Modeling of air pollution and its relationship with mortality and morbidity in Madrid, Spain

Objective: Evaluation of the association between air pollution and mortalit y and morbidity is becoming ever more complex owing to changes in inner-cit y air pollution, marked by decreasing values for all main pollutants save t hose associated with traffic. This has led to the need for the study of new epidemiological scenarios in which most pollutants are below guideline val ues. Nonetheless, the health effects are significant. Methods: This report presents the results of a statistically based model for real-time forecasti ng of mortality and morbidity in Madrid, with meteorological and pollution series serving as inputs. Results and conclusions: Not only did the models perform well with correlation coefficients between predicted and observed v alues (r = 0.683 for mortality, I = 0.681 for morbidity), but they enabled quantification of the impact of air pollution on mortality and morbidity (w ith increases ranging from 1.8% to 12% for mortality and from 2.3% to 18% f or morbidity for a 25-mu g/m(3) increase in pollutants). Moreover, attentio n should be drawn to the observation that the model proved to be easy to im plement and operate on a routine basis.