Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a major urban air pollutant and is associated with new onset asthma among children worldwide. Since NO2 concentrations are spatially heterogeneous and correlated with population, the spatial resolution of concentration estimates and disease burden calculations could strongly influence the magnitude and spatial distribution of estimated NO2-attributable pediatric asthma cases. Here, we investigate the effect of spatial resolution of exposure and population data on estimated NO2 attributable pediatric asthma incidence. We use epidemiologically-derived health impact functions to estimate NO2-attribtuable asthma incidence for the U.S. and India, two countries with different degrees of urbanicity. As inputs to the health impact function, we use population and NO2 concentration estimates at 100m resolution and aggregated to coarser spatial resolutions: 500m, 1km, 10km, and 100km. Estimated NO2-attributable pediatric asthma burdens differ by <1% for resolutions of 100m up to 1km for both countries. However, performing the analysis at 10km and 100km results in 5% and 17% fewer new asthma cases among children in India and 6% and 32% fewer in the U.S., respectively. We perform a similar analysis for the 500 most populated cities at 1km and 10km resolution, finding that the coarser resolution leads to lower estimated NO2-attributable asthma incidence in nearly all cities, especially for cities with smaller land areas. We conclude that 1km spatial resolution balances accuracy and computational efficiency in estimating NO2-attributable asthma burdens at national and urban levels, and that coarser resolutions may result in underestimates.

中文翻译：

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估计的 NO2 归因小儿哮喘发病率对网格分辨率和城市化的敏感性

二氧化氮 (NO2) 是一种主要的城市空气污染物，与全球儿童新发哮喘有关。由于 NO2 浓度在空间上是异质的并且与人口相关，因此浓度估计和疾病负担计算的空间分辨率可能会强烈影响估计的 NO2 归因于儿科哮喘病例的大小和空间分布。在这里，我们调查了暴露的空间分辨率和人口数据对估计的 NO2 归因小儿哮喘发病率的影响。我们使用流行病学衍生的健康影响函数来估计美国和印度这两个城市化程度不同的国家的 NO2 归因于哮喘的发病率。作为健康影响函数的输入，我们使用 100m 分辨率下的人口和 NO2 浓度估计值，并汇总到更粗略的空间分辨率：500m、1km、10km 和 100km。对于两个国家 100m 至 1km 的分辨率，估计的 NO2 归因于儿童哮喘负担的差异小于 1%。然而，在 10 公里和 100 公里处进行分析后，印度儿童的新哮喘病例分别减少了 5% 和 17%，而美国则分别减少了 6% 和 32%。我们以 1 公里和 10 公里的分辨率对 500 个人口最多的城市进行了类似的分析，发现分辨率越粗，几乎所有城市的 NO2 归因哮喘发病率估计值越低，尤其是土地面积较小的城市。我们得出的结论是，在估计国家和城市层面的 NO2 归因哮喘负担时，1 公里的空间分辨率平衡了准确性和计算效率，