Scientometric analysis of health impact assessment of outdoor air pollution by WHO-AirQ tool (2005-2019)

This study provides a scientometric analysis of the health impact assessment within AirQ between 2005 and 2019, which are listed in the web science databases. Studies have been conducted in various indexed journals, researchers in World Health Organization (WHO) regional areas on product articles, international collaboration, and citation and keyword analysis.

Bibliographic records of research publications and articles were found and after screening process were input to study plan. The authors compared the growth of article that was published in this period time, conducted a citation and co-authorship analysis, and keywords co-occurrences relationship by publication using the scientometric visualization, VOSviewer.

The AirQ applying tool in research literature has seen most increase in 2017 production over the study period. Contributions by authors affiliated with WHO-Eastern Mediterranean Regional Office (EMRO) account for the most research literature. Most of studies focus on particles Particulate Matter with diameter <10 µm (PM10) and Particulate Matter with diameter <2.5µm (PM2.5) and according to total mortality and in hospital admission, Respiratory Disease (RD) and Cardio Vascular Disease (CVD) are most commonly.

All potential of AirQ has not been used in studies. Despite all function its scope is limited to several countries in the WHO regions. Implementation of “Driving Force, Pressure, State, Exposure, Effect, and Action” (DPSEEA) conceptual model need some evidence that AirQ can achieve and estimate Health Impact Assessment (HIA) but we didn’t find any articles that work on intervention by it on policy makers and management programs.