The health effects of air pollution in Delhi, India

The authors report the results of a time-series study of the impact of particulate air pollution on daily mortality in Delhi. They find: a) A positive, significant relationship between particulate pollution and daily nontraumatic deaths as well as deaths from certain causes (respiratory and cardiovascular problems) and for certain age groups. b) In general, these impacts are smaller than those estimated for other countries, where on average a 100-microgram increase in total suspended particulates (TSP) leads to a 6-percent increase in nontraumatic mortality. In Delhi, such an increase in TSP is associated with a 2.3-percent increase in deaths. c) The differences in magnitudes of the effects are most likely explained by differences in distributions of age at death and cause of death, as most deaths in Delhi occur before the age of 65 and are not attributed to causes with a strong association with air pollution. d) Although air pollution seems to have less impact on mortality counts in Delhi, the number of life-years saved per death avoided is greater in Delhi than in US cities -- because the age distribution of impacts in these two places varies. In the United States particulates have the greatest influence on daily deaths among persons 65 and older. In Delhi, they have the greatest impact in the 15-to-44 age group. That means that for each death associated with air pollution, on average more life-years would be saved in Delhi than in the United States. Large differences in the magnitude of effects do call into question the validity of the"concentration-response transfer"procedure. In that procedure, concentration-response relationships found for industrial countries are applied to cities in developing countries with little or no adjustment, to estimate the effects of pollution on daily mortality.Demographics,Public Health Promotion,Montreal Protocol,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Air Quality&Clean Air,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Montreal Protocol,Demographics,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Systems Development&Reform

Residential electricity pricing in China

The paper aims to evaluate the implications of the new residential pricing system in China by examining price and income elasticity of demand by different household types. We use pre-reform annual panel data for 29 provinces over a fourteen year period, from 1998 to 2011, applying feasible generalize least squares models. The price and income elasticities for household sector are -0.412, and 1.476 at nation level, -0.300 and 1.550 in urban areas and -0.522 and 1.093 in rural areas respectively. With regional effects, the price and income elasticities are -0.146 and 1.286 for urban households in coastal provinces and -0.772 and 1.259 for urban households in inland provinces respectively. The empirical results reveal that there is important heterogeneity in the responsiveness to electricity price changes according to household income level and location

A feasible route for the design and manufacture of customised respiratory protection through digital facial capture

The World Health Organisation has called for a 40% increase in personal protective equipment manufacturing worldwide, recognising that frontline workers need effective protection during the COVID-19 pandemic. Current devices suffer from high fit-failure rates leaving significant proportions of users exposed to risk of viral infection. Driven by non-contact, portable, and widely available 3D scanning technologies, a workflow is presented whereby a user’s face is rapidly categorised using relevant facial parameters. Device design is then directed down either a semi-customised or fully-customised route. Semi-customised designs use the extracted eye-to-chin distance to categorise users in to pre-determined size brackets established via a cohort of 200 participants encompassing 87.5% of the cohort. The user’s nasal profile is approximated to a Gaussian curve to further refine the selection in to one of three subsets. Flexible silicone provides the facial interface accommodating minor mismatches between true nasal profile and the approximation, maintaining a good seal in this challenging region. Critically, users with outlying facial parameters are flagged for the fully-customised route whereby the silicone interface is mapped to 3D scan data. These two approaches allow for large scale manufacture of a limited number of design variations, currently nine through the semi-customised approach, whilst ensuring effective device fit. Furthermore, labour-intensive fully-customised designs are targeted as those users who will most greatly benefit. By encompassing both approaches, the presented workflow balances manufacturing scale-up feasibility with the diverse range of users to provide well-fitting devices as widely as possible. Novel flow visualisation on a model face is presented alongside qualitative fit-testing of prototype devices to support the workflow methodology