Mazura Sahani

Abdul Basit Ahmad Tajuddin¹, Richard Broome², Joshua Horsley³, Bin Jalaludin⁴, Fay Johnston⁵,

Mohd Talib Latif¹, Norlen Mohamed⁶, Geoffrey Morgan³, Mazrura Sahani^1*, Grant Williamson⁵

^*Corresponding author/ Presenter

¹Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Malaysia

²Sydney Local Health District, Sydney, Australia

³University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia

⁴University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

⁵University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia

⁶Centre Disease Control, Ministry of Health, Putrajaya, Malaysia

Global Burden of Disease (GBD) reported that the PM2.5 was the fifth ranking mortality risk factors in 2015. WHO estimated that exposure to PM 2.5 caused 4.2 million deaths globally (95% CI: 3.7-4.8 million) and about 26% of deaths due to ambient air pollution in 2012 occurred in South East Asia. Although the global estimate for PM2.5 on health has been well documented, the characteristics and composition of the PM2.5 is very much dependent on the sources, which these are country/region specific. Malaysia’s population is not only exposed to local sources of air pollutants but it also exposed to regional smoke from the seasonal forest fires (or ‘haze’) that occur in Sumatra and Kalimantan. The fine particulate pollution from these forest and peat fires can reach hazardous levels for extended periods of time, posing severe health risks to millions of people across Malaysia. An assessment of the health impacts of levels of particular matter less than 2.5μm in diameter (PM_2.5) was conducted to quantify the burden of disease due to air pollution and haze episodes in Malaysia. This assessment was a collaborative effort with the Centre for Air Quality and Research and Evaluation (CAR), Australia. We used the Integrated Exposure Risk Function (IER), developed for the GBD 2010 and 2013 studies, also used by World Health Organization to estimate the burden of disease due to air pollution. For each state in Malaysia and each health outcome, the attributable number of health events due to air / haze pollution exposure was calculated. The burden of diseases on premature mortality from air pollution/ haze was estimated for Malaysia.