Health Impact Assessment of a Predicted Air Quality Change by Moving Traffic from an Urban Ring Road into a Tunnel. The Case of Antwerp, Belgium.

BACKGROUND:The Antwerp ring road has a traffic density of 300,000 vehicles per day and borders the city center. The 'Ringland project' aims to change the current 'open air ring road' into a 'filtered tunneled ring road', putting the entire urban ring road into a tunnel and thus filtering air pollution. We conducted a health impact assessment (HIA) to quantify the possible benefit of a 'filtered tunneled ring road', as compared to the 'open air ring road' scenario, on air quality and its long-term health effects. MATERIALS AND METHODS:We modeled the change in annual ambient PM2.5 and NO2 concen... Mehr ...