multiexpose: Aggregate health impacts from multiple exposures

In healthiar: Quantifying and Monetizing Health Impacts Attributable to Exposure

Aggregate health impacts from multiple exposures

Description

This function aggregates health impacts from multiple exposures to environmental stressors.

Usage

multiexpose(
  output_attribute_exp_1,
  output_attribute_exp_2,
  exp_name_1,
  exp_name_2,
  approach_multiexposure = "additive"
)

Arguments

output_attribute_exp_1, output_attribute_exp_2	Output of attribute() for exposure 1 and 2, respectively. Baseline health data and population must be identical in outputs 1 and 2.
exp_name_1, exp_name_2	String referring to the name of the environmental exposures 1 and 2
approach_multiexposure	String specifying the multiple exposures approach to be used in the assessment. Options: "additive" (default), "multiplicative" or "combined". The "multiplicative" and "combined" approaches merge the exposures within each row and therefore require one single exposure value per exposure (e.g. the population-weighted mean); they cannot be used with exposure distributions, because the exposure categories of two exposures are not paired. Only "additive" accepts exposure distributions.

Details

Methodology

This function can add up the attributable health impacts from correlated exposures applying one of the following methods \insertCiteStrak2024_reporthealthiar:

• Additive \insertCiteSteenland2006-ehealthiar

• Multiplicative \insertCiteJerrett2013-ouphealthiar

• Combined \insertCiteSteenland2006-ehealthiar

Detailed information about the methodology (including equations) is available in the package vignette. More specifically, see chapters:

• Two correlated exposures

Value

This function returns a list containing:

1) health_main (tibble) containing the main results;

• impact (numeric column) attributable health burden/impact

• pop_fraction (numeric column) population attributable fraction; only applicable in relative risk assessments

• And many more

2) health_detailed (list) containing detailed (and interim) results.

• input_args (list) containing all the argument inputs used in the background

• input_table (tibble) containing the inputs after preparation

• results_raw (tibble) containing results for all combinations of input (geo units, uncertainty, age and sex specific data...)

• results_by_... (tibble) containing results stratified by each geographic unit, age or sex.

Author(s)

Alberto Castro & Axel Luyten

References

\insertAllCited

See Also

• Upstream: attribute_health, attribute_lifetable

Examples

# Goal: determine aggregated health impacts from multiple exposures
# Step 1: create assessment with exposure 1
output_attribute_exp_1 <- attribute_health(
  erf_shape = "log_linear",
  rr_central = 1.369,
  rr_increment = 10,
  exp_central = 8.85,
  cutoff_central = 5,
  bhd_central = 30747
)
output_attribute_exp_1$health_main$impact
# Step 2: create assessment with exposure 2
output_attribute_exp_2 <- attribute_mod(
  output_attribute = output_attribute_exp_1,
  exp_central = 10.9,
  rr_central = 1.031
)
output_attribute_exp_2$health_main$impact
# Step 3: aggregate impacts of the two assessments
results <- multiexpose(
  output_attribute_exp_1 = output_attribute_exp_1,
  output_attribute_exp_2 = output_attribute_exp_2,
  exp_name_1 = "pm2.5",
  exp_name_2 = "no2",
  approach_multiexposure = "multiplicative"
)
results$health_main$impact

healthiar documentation built on Oct. 12, 2026, 5:07 p.m.