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Germany Health Impact

Translate PM2.5 exposure into WHO exceedance and a simple cigarette-equivalent indicator. This pilot covers 269 eligible cities with OpenAQ-derived daily AQI history.

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Germany health-impact overview

Cigs / day avg
0.4
Berkeley Earth heuristic
Life-years lost / person
0.4
EPIC AQLI coefficient
Cities above WHO annual AQG
97%
annual mean > 5 ug/m3
Cities measured
269
of 297 OpenAQ cities

Same PM2.5. Three standards. Three verdicts.

PM2.5 5 ug/m3
US EPA AQI28
WHO tierAQG
Cigs/day0.2
AQLI0.0 y
PM2.5 10 ug/m3
US EPA AQI53
WHO tierAQG
Cigs/day0.5
AQLI0.5 y
PM2.5 15 ug/m3
US EPA AQI62
WHO tierAQG
Cigs/day0.7
AQLI1.0 y
PM2.5 25 ug/m3
US EPA AQI81
WHO tierIT-4
Cigs/day1.1
AQLI2.0 y

Top 20 cities by cigarette-equivalent exposure

Using Berkeley Earth's 22 ug/m3 = 1 cigarette/day heuristic. Cigarette equivalence is a communication tool, not a clinical diagnosis.

#CityPM2.5Cigs/dayLife-yrs lostAvg AQI
1PößneckThuringia25.6 ug/m31.22.0 y80
2Bad VilbelHesse21.3 ug/m31.01.6 y73
3KulmbachBavaria20.9 ug/m31.01.6 y13
4Nieder-OlmRhineland-Palatinate19.6 ug/m30.91.4 y68
5FürstenfeldbruckBavaria18.1 ug/m30.81.3 y60
6MemmingenBavaria17.5 ug/m30.81.2 y58
7Höhenkirchen-SiegertsbrunnBavaria17.1 ug/m30.81.2 y60
8HirschaidBavaria17.0 ug/m30.81.2 y64
9NorderstedtSchleswig-Holstein16.4 ug/m30.71.1 y61
10NiedernhausenHesse16.2 ug/m30.71.1 y61
11Burgkirchen an der AlzBavaria15.8 ug/m30.71.1 y59
12BudenheimRhineland-Palatinate15.4 ug/m30.71.0 y27
13ReiskirchenHesse15.4 ug/m30.71.0 y59
14WissenRhineland-Palatinate14.9 ug/m30.71.0 y58
15WeilheimBavaria14.6 ug/m30.70.9 y57
16CuxhavenLower Saxony14.5 ug/m30.70.9 y21
17HennefNorth Rhine-Westphalia14.1 ug/m30.60.9 y47
18SeevetalLower Saxony13.9 ug/m30.60.9 y53
19Schwäbisch GmündBaden-Württemberg13.0 ug/m30.60.8 y54
20EmdenLower Saxony13.0 ug/m30.60.8 y44

Methodology & sources

This page starts with OpenAQ PM2.5 and PM10 measurements mapped to AQI Now cities, then rolls daily city observations into city-level PM2.5 averages and US EPA AQI summaries. Health equivalents are screening indicators: useful for comparing exposure, not a clinical diagnosis.

Cigarette equivalence
22 ug/m3 = 1 cig/day

Muller & Muller, Berkeley Earth (2015), derived from Pope et al. 2002 and cigarette risk factors.

Life-years lost
0.098 y per ug/m3

EPIC Air Quality Life Index coefficient above the WHO annual PM2.5 baseline of 5 ug/m3.

WHO 2021 PM2.5
15 ug/m3 24-hr AQG

WHO tiers shown here use AQG 15, IT-4 25, IT-3 37.5, IT-2 50, IT-1 75 ug/m3.

Methodology

The extractor maps OpenAQ monitoring locations to the nearest AQI Now city in the same country, aggregates PM2.5 and PM10 to daily city averages, and converts those concentrations to US EPA AQI. Country tool pages use only city summaries that satisfy the configured minimum daily coverage threshold.

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