The impacts of aviation emissions on human health through changes in air quality and UV irradiance

World-wide demand for air transportation is rising steadily. The air transportation network may be limited by aviation’s growing environmental impacts. These impacts take the form of climate impacts, noise impacts, and health impacts, the latter of which are addressed in this thesis. Aircraft emissions released into the atmosphere have an impact on human health. In the context of assessing the environmental impacts of aviation-related policies, costs and benefits on human health must be considered. Two different models were developed as tools to assess the impacts of aircraft emissions on human health. The first model estimates the changes in skin cancer incidences and mortalities due to changes in ozone column caused by aircraft NOx emissions. The second model estimates changes in health endpoints related to changes in ambient concentrations of particulate matter (PM2.5) by estimating changes in elemental carbon, primary and secondary organic PM, secondary sulfates, and secondary nitrates. The air quality model discussed herein is the second iteration in the development of a response surface model (RSM) based on a set of 25 simulations done with the Community Multiscale Air Quality model (CMAQ), a more complex atmospheric chemistry model. The increase in adult premature mortalities in the U.S. caused by air quality impacts of aviation emissions in year 2005 is estimated at 210 deaths per year (90% confidence interval: 130 340). This considers only those emissions that occur below 3000 feet above ground level as is consistent with