Title

National and subnational trend of exposure to UV radiation and its diseases burden and inequality distribution in Iran over 1990-2010

Principal Investigator

Dr. Mohammad Hossein Solat

Abstract

The present study was conducted to evaluate the trend of exposure to UV radiation in a national and sub-national level in Iran over 1990-2010.
Since there were few studies reporting the exposure level to UV radiation in Iran, we sought an alternative approach to collect the required data, which was gathering the data from the TOMS dataset for different parts of the country and for time periods of 1990-1993 and 1997-2004. Then, we conducted a literature review and selected few target health endpoints by which to estimate the burdun of disease associated with UV exposure in future.
Resutls indicated that for all provinces and during the entire study period, UV intensity was way higher in warm seasons (e.g. 6914 J/m2 in uly in Khuzestan) than in cold seasons (e.g. 1371 J/m2 in January). In addition, it was found that southern provinces were exposed to higher levels of UV radiation than northern provinces. It was also found that a decrease in latitude results in a decrease in UV exposure as well (R2=0.89). Results also indicated that UV intensity levels were almost constant during the study period and did not vary significantly.
Results from the present study can be used to estimate the burden of disease associated with exposure to UV radiation in a national and sub-national level and to evaluate the inequality in exposure levels in national and sub-national levels.

Year

2013