Determination of Ozone-induced mortality in Aydın province, Turkey in 2022 using AIRQ+ Modeling

Fuels for energy production and road traffic are the main causes of air pollution. According to 2020 data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the number of deaths from air pollution is 6.7 million per year. Ozone has harmful effects if it is above the limit value. Our aim is to investigate the effect of ozone on mortality when it exceeds the limit value at ground level. In our study, we used data from Aydın province, which has the highest average ground-level ozone level in Turkey. From the Air Quality Monitoring website of the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, we collected data from 4 stations in Aydın province and divided by the number of stations to obtain the average ground-level O3 value. We used the World Health Organization AIRQ+ 2.2 program to calculate ozone-related mortality. Ministry of Environment, Urbanization and Climate Change Air Quality Monitoring website, we calculated the average O3 value as 64.73 μg/m³ between 01.03.2022-30.08.2022, which is the 6 months with the highest amount of O3 at ground level in Aydın province. According to the results obtained in the AIRQ+ program, the estimated attributable mortality rate was 0.47% (CI 95%, RR: 0-0.93), the estimated number of deaths from attributable cases was 22 (CI 95%, RR: 0-44) and the estimated number of deaths from attributable cases per 100000 population at risk was 1.92 (CI 95%, RR: 0-3.80). The long-term effect of ground-level ozone appears to be undeniable in increasing the number of deaths.