Trends in the environmental burden of disease in the Netherlands, 1980 - 2020

Several aspects of the environment, such as exposure to air pollution or noise, can have effects on our health. In order to gain some perspective on the dimensions of this environment-related health loss in the Netherlands, we have calculated Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs) for the health effects of air pollution, noise, radon, UV and indoor dampness for the period 1980 to 2020. DALYs give a crude indication of the (potential) number of healthy life years lost in a population due to premature mortality or morbidity (the disease burden). In the Netherlands, roughly 2 to 5 percent of the total disease burden can be attributed to the effect of (short-term) exposure to air pollution, noise, radon, total natural UV and dampness in houses for the year 2000. Including the more uncertain effects of long-term PM10 exposure, this percentage can increase to up to 13%, assuming no threshold. Among the investigated factors, the relatively uncertain effects of long-term PM10 exposure have the greatest impact on public health in the Netherlands. Long-term PM10 is an indicator for a complex urban air pollution mixture. The levels of PM10 are decreasing, and therefore the related disease burden is also expected to decrease. Noise exposure and its associated disease burden will probably increase up to a level where the disease burden is similar to the disease burden attributable to traffic accidents. These rough estimates do not provide a complete and unambiguous picture of the environmental health burden, since data are uncertain, not all environmental-health relationships are known, not all environmental factors have been included, nor was it possible to assess all potential health effects. The effects of a number of these assumptions were evaluated in an uncertainty analysis.