[Estimate of potential health benefits of the reduction of air pollution with PM10 in Trieste, Italy].

Objectives: Estimate of the possible benefits, in Trieste, of a reduction of PM10 to values not over 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 microg/mc, utilizing data of PM10 of the year 2002 as cause specific deaths and admissions.

Design: Cause specific deaths and admissions attributable to short term effects of PM10 calculated by software AirQ, utilizing Relative Risk from MISA 1 study (as published in 2002).

Setting: Trieste (Italy).

Main Outcomes Measures: Cause specific deaths and admissions.

Results: Using air pollution data for 2002, 1.8% (CI 95% 0.6%; 2.9%) of natural deaths, 2.2% (CI 95% 0.6%; 3.7%) of cardiovascular deaths and 2.5% (CI 95% 0; 7.3%) of respiratory deaths, 1.5% (CI 95% 0.6; 2.4%) of cardiovascular admissions and 1.6% (CI 95% 0; 3.3%) of respiratory admissions were attributable to PM10 concentrations over 20 microg/mc.

Conclusions: AirQ software proved to be a valid and reliable tool to estimate the potential short term effects of air pollution. Special attention is required to choose the relative risks to be utilized.