Particulate Matter impacts on public health in a Mediterranean coastal city, Patras, Greece

It is of great consensus among the scientific community that particulate matter (less than 10 μm or 2.5 μm in diameter, hereafter PM10 and PM2.5, respectively) has become a significant threat for human health in modern urban agglomerations. Taking into consideration the intensification of urbanization, given that in 2030 more than 60% of the world's population is expected to live in cities, urban morbidity and mortality due to adverse impacts of PMs is very likely to increase. This is the case of a Mediterranean coastal city, Patras, which is Greece's third-largest city and the regional capital of Western Greece, in the northern Peloponnese. The goal of this study is to examine the effects of PMs on the cardiopulmonary mortality within the framework of the AirQ+ model, developed by the World Health Organization. We focus on the Relative Risk (RR) of cardiopulmonary mortality attributed to PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations. The datasets used in the analysis concern daily means of PM concentrations acquired from the network of the Laboratory of Atmospheric Physics, Department of Physics, University of Patras, covering background, urban city center and north/south urban areas of Patras, within the period 2017-2019.