Sensitivity of estimated NO2-attributable pediatric asthma incidence to grid resolution and urbanicity

Nitrogen dioxide (NO _2 ) is a major urban air pollutant and is associated with new onset asthma among children worldwide. Since NO _2 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 NO _2 -attributable pediatric asthma (PA) cases. Here, we investigate the effect of spatial resolution of exposure and population data on estimated NO _2 attributable PA incidence. We use epidemiologically derived health impact functions to estimate NO _2 -attributable asthma incidence for the U.S. and India, two countries with different degrees of urbanicity, using population and NO _2 concentration estimates at 100 m resolution and aggregated to coarser spatial resolutions: 500 m, 1 km, 10 km, and 100 km. Estimated NO _2 -attributable PA burdens differ by