The Impact of Air Pollution on Mortality in Russian Cities with a Population of more than 100 Thousand Inhabitants

The aim of the study was to measure the effect of air pollution on mortality in Russian cities with a population of over 100 thousand inhabitants. To achieve the goal, several tasks were set: 1) to characterize the current epidemiological model of mortality in Russian cities; 2) to analyze existing approaches to study the effect of air pollution on mortality; 3) to analyze the system of indicators of air pollution; 4) to create a database of mortality in Russian cities with a population of over 100 thousand people; 5) to build a list of socio-economic and demographic indicators that affect the differences in mortality between cities; 6) to measure the contribution of air pollution to differences in mortality in Russian cities, taking into account the socio-economic and demographic characteristics of cities. Based on the results of the regression analysis, it was found that differences in the level of air pollution are associated with differences in the level of mortality between cities: in cities with high and very high levels of pollution, where the value of air pollution index (API) is higher than 7, life expectancy at birth in 2016-2018 was 1.38 (95% CI: 0.69; 2.07) years less for men and 0.54 (95% CI: 0.12; 0.96) years less for women than in the cities of the control group with low and high levels of pollution. Such estimates are obtained after control on other socio-economic and demographic determinants of spatial differences in mortality. It was also revealed that the indicators characterizing the educational composition of the population and the characteristics of alcohol consumption make a greater contribution to the differences in mortality between cities than the indicators of air pollution, income and smoking prevalence. The analysis included 117 Russian cities with a population of over 100 thousand inhabitants, for which there was information on the categories of air quality in 2010-2018.