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Spain Health Impact

Translate PM2.5 exposure into WHO exceedance and a simple cigarette-equivalent indicator. This pilot covers 172 eligible cities with OpenAQ-derived daily AQI history.

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Spain 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
91%
annual mean > 5 ug/m3
Cities measured
172
of 253 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
1GüimarCanary Islands29.4 ug/m31.32.4 y58
2AlcantarillaMurcia18.4 ug/m30.81.3 y28
3PonferradaCastille-Leon16.6 ug/m30.81.1 y19
4OurenseGalicia15.6 ug/m30.71.0 y61
5San Adrián de BesósCatalonia15.0 ug/m30.71.0 y51
6ManlleuCatalonia14.8 ug/m30.71.0 y58
7SevillaAndalusia14.3 ug/m30.70.9 y58
8MurciaMurcia14.3 ug/m30.60.9 y58
9BailénAndalusia13.8 ug/m30.60.9 y57
10GranadaAndalusia13.8 ug/m30.60.9 y46
11VigoGalicia13.1 ug/m30.60.8 y56
12Palos de la FronteraAndalusia13.1 ug/m30.60.8 y18
13MolletCatalonia12.7 ug/m30.60.8 y54
14Collado-VillalbaMadrid12.3 ug/m30.60.7 y51
15JaénAndalusia12.3 ug/m30.60.7 y52
16Molina de SeguraMurcia12.3 ug/m30.60.7 y52
17LleidaCatalonia12.1 ug/m30.60.7 y50
18HuelvaAndalusia12.0 ug/m30.50.7 y49
19SevilleAndalusia11.9 ug/m30.50.7 y51
20Santa CruzCanary Islands11.6 ug/m30.50.6 y49

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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