Luis Abdon Cifuentes

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Verified

Luis verified their affiliation via an institutional email.

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• Ph.D
• Professor (Associate) at Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Background We quantify the mortality burden and economic loss attributable to nonoptimal temperatures for cold and heat in the Central and South American countries in the Multi-City Multi-Country (MCC) Collaborative Research Network. Methods We collected data for 66 locations from 13 countries in Central and South America to estimate location-spec...

Earthquakes and tsunamis are natural phenomena that trigger severe consequences for communities. Compared to residents, tourists are more vulnerable to natural hazards, mainly due to a lack of knowledge of the territory hazards, alert signs, and the local language. To encourage disaster preparedness behavior, this study explored the differences in...

Exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is known to cause adverse health outcomes. Most of the evidence has been derived from developed countries, with lower pollution levels and different demographics and comorbidities from the rest of the world. Here we leverage new satellite-based measurements of PM2.5, combined with comprehensive public rec...

Objectives: This study aims to estimate the short-term preventable mortality and associated economic costs of complying with the World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines (AQGs) limit values for PM10 and PM2.5 in nine major Latin American cities. Methods: We estimated city-specific PM-mortality associations using time-series regressio...

Bans on single-use plastic shopping bags (SUPBs) are a popular policy to tackle plastic pollution. However, their success has been evaluated solely based on reduced SUPBs consumption, ignoring the impacts of substitutes. This article addresses this gap by analyzing the Chilean plastic bag ban law. Results show a reduction of ~249 kilotons of SUPBs...

Unlabelled: Many Chilean cities suffer from high air pollution from industrial, mobile, and residential wood-burning sources. Several studies have linked PM2.5 air pollution exposure to higher mortality risk from cardiovascular, pulmonary, and lung cancer causes. In recent years, Chile has developed an extensive air pollution monitoring network to...

Risk perception is considered the primary motivator for taking preparedness actions. But people with prior experience and a high‐risk perception are not necessarily more prepared. This relationship is even more complex when assessing preparedness levels for hazards with different characteristics. These inconsistent findings can be explained by how...

En la Declaración sobre Gestión Sostenible del Plástico (2019), los países miembros de la Alianza del Pacífico (AP), Colombia, Chile, México, y Perú, junto a Ecuador, tomaron la decisión de enfrentar la gestión de plásticos de manera sostenible, con un enfoque de economía circular. Insertado en este contexto, el presente estudio analiza y compara e...

The threat of climate change on population health and the urgent need to act Climate change is associated with negative health outcomes, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. This article analyses the threat of climate change on population health and the urgent need to implement measures to avoid this damage. Heat vulnerability, heatwave...

Climate change is associated with negative health outcomes, such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. This article analyses the threat of climate change on population health and the urgent need to implement measures to avoid this damage. Heat vulnerability, heatwave exposures, and wildfire exposure to forest fires have increased in Chile. In...

In January 2017, hundreds of fires in Mediterranean Chile burnt more than 5000 km2, an area nearly 14 times the 40-year mean. We contextualize these fires in terms of estimates of global fire intensity using MODIS satellite record, and provide an overview of the climatic factors and recent changes in land use that led to the active fire season and...

In 2011, the School of Engineering at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile launched an alternative admission program to attract talented high-school students from low-income families who would not be accepted by the conventional admission process but have otherwise shown outstanding academic results at the high-school level. Applicants came fro...

It has been found that both preparedness for disasters and public response are significantly influenced by risk perceptions and trust in authorities and experts. Although Chile is a country with a long history of natural disasters, few studies have evaluated the risk perceptions of natural hazards or the degree of social trust. The aim of this stud...

This work advances the understanding of compensation demanded for environmental impacts on atmosphere, lakes and rivers, soil, and ocean generated by mining, urban, fishing and agriculture activities. Our aims are to determine whether compensation demanded depends on the standard variables used in the field of risk perception (as perceived risk, pu...

The aim of this study was to characterize the influence that different dimensions of public trust in regulatory institutions have on social acceptability judgments of electricity generation sources in Chile. Chilean university students' acceptability judgments of ten energy sources were characterized using a web-based survey, covering risk and bene...

The main objective of this report is to provide relevant information to improve the decision-making process regarding air quality and pollution control.

Air pollution is a major environmental concern in Chile. There is a growing international interest in the use of economic instruments to abate pollution considering they are more efficient and flexible. This study looks at the performance of two economic instruments used in prevention or decontamination plans: emissions taxes and tradable emission...

To further the understanding and implementation of expert elicitation methods in evaluations of public policies related to air pollution, the present study's main goal was to explore the potential strengths and weaknesses of Structured Expert Judgment (SEJ) methodology as a way to derive a C-R function for chronic PM2.5 exposure and premature morta...

Encouraging the adoption of a pro-environmental behavior is critical in order to reduce the environmental impacts and to move toward a more sustainable future. Higher education plays an important role in training professionals who have an important role in protecting the environment in the future. The aim of this study is to identify whether there...

Background The health effects of particulate air pollution are widely recognized and there is some evidence that the magnitude of these effects vary by particle component. We studied the effects of ambient fine particles (aerodynamic diameter < 2.5μm, PM2.5) and their components on cause-specific mortality in Santiago, Chile, where particulate poll...

Introduction: The ESCALA* project (Estudio de Salud y Contaminación del Aire en Latinoamérica) is an HEI-funded study that aims to examine the association between exposure to outdoor air pollution and mortality in nine Latin American cities, using a common analytic framework to obtain comparable and updated information on the effects of air pollut...

Social acceptability is a determinant factor in the failure or success of the government's decisions about which electricity generation sources will satisfy the growing demand for energy. The main goal of this study was to validate a causal trust-acceptability model for electricity generation sources. In the model, social acceptance of an energy so...

Environmental health indicators (EHIs) are applied in a variety of research and decision-making settings to gauge the health consequences of environmental hazards, to summarize complex information, or to compare policy impacts across locations or time periods. While EHIs can provide a useful means of conveying information, they also can be misused....

Background: Recent studies have reported an increase risk of hospitalization in patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) in association with air pollution by small particles. The Metropolitan región in Chile is characterized by high pollution indexes which are related to increased mortality from respiratory diseases. No systematic evaluation of...

El ruido es un subproducto no deseado y la locomoción colectiva es reconocida internacionalmente como la mayor responsable de la contaminación acústica de una ciudad (Platzer et al, 2007). Para determinar los niveles de ruido a los que la población se ve expuesta en las distintas comunas de Santiago y la pérdida de bienestar asociada a la exposició...

People with less education in Europe, Asia, and the United States are at higher risk of mortality associated with daily and longer-term air pollution exposure. We examined whether educational level modified associations between mortality and ambient particulate pollution (PM10) in Latin America, using several timescales. The study population includ...

Typical psychometric paradigm factors appear to have greater explanatory power for individual participants than previously envisaged. It is possible to acquire interpretable information about single participants using two factors (catastrophic potential and social and personal exposure) from aggregated participant‐focused data. Our results suggest...

Studies over the past decade have found empirical links between trust in risk management institutions and the risk perceptions and acceptability of various individual hazards. Mostly addressing food technologies, no study to date has explored wider possible relationships among all four core variables (risk, benefit, trust and acceptability) coverin...

Studies investigating the air pollution and health co-benefits from climate change policies

Factors affecting vulnerability to heat-related mortality are not well understood. Identifying susceptible populations is of particular importance given anticipated rising temperatures from climatic change. We investigated heat-related mortality for three Latin American cities (Mexico City, Mexico; São Paulo, Brazil; Santiago, Chile) using a case-c...

Greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies can provide ancillary benefits in terms of short-term improvements in air quality and associated health benefits. Several studies have analyzed the ancillary impacts of GHG policies for a variety of locations, pollutants, and policies. In this paper we review the existing evidence on ancillary health benefit...

The coastal zone of the Pacific Rim is home for about one-third of the world's population. Disproportionate growth of Far Eastern economies has produced a disproportionate share of related environmental difficulties. As the region searches for acceptable compromises between growth and environmental quality, its influence on global environmental hea...

Most psychometric studies of risk perception have used data that have been averaged over participants prior to analysis. Such aggregation obscures variation among participants and inflates the magnitude of relationships between psychometric dimensions and dependent variables such as overall riskiness. However, most studies that have not averaged da...

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ABSTRACT Anexperiment,was conducted,in a real environment to test how,information delivery affects risk ranking. Another aim was to propose the bestformat,for delivering information. Different people received different types of information,about risks in a risk ranking exercise: Group 1 received a descriptive ,paragraph ,about the hazards (Format 1...

Urban centers in Latin American often face high levels of air pollution as a result of economic and industrial growth. Decisions with regard to industry, transportation, and development will affect air pollution and health both in the short term and in the far future through climate change. We investigated the pollution health consequences of modes...

Persons with lower socioeconomic status (SES) may face higher risk from polluted air. This disproportionate burden may result from elevated exposure, due to proximity to roadways or indoor air pollution from burning of biomass, and from differences in nutrition and access to health care, among other factors. Several studies have explored this topic...

En la UE se ha estimado que los costes de la congesti�n representan el 2% de su PIB y que el coste de la poluci�n del aire y ruido supera el 0,6% del PIB, siendo alrededor del 90% de los mismos ocasionados por el transporte terrestre. Ante este hecho y el continuo aumento de la demanda del transporte privado frente al p�blico para los desplazamient...

Energy and energy technologies have a central role in social and eco-nomic development at all scales, from household and community to regional and national. Among its welfare effects, energy is closely linked with public health both positively and negatively, the latter through environmental pollution and degradation. We review the current research...

It is well-documented that energy and energy systems have a central role in social and economic development and human welfare at all scales, from household and community to regional and national (41). Among its various welfare effects, energy is closely linked with people s health. Some of the effects of energy on health and welfare are direct. Wit...

Este documento fue comisionado por la Red de Medio Ambiente del Diálogo Regional de Política para la III Reunión Hemisférica celebrada los días 9 y 10 de marzo de 2004. Durante las últimas décadas se han establecido derechos y obligaciones ciudadanas; se han definido las funciones del Estado y de los organismos públicos responsables en materia ambi...

The effects of both ambient air pollution and socioeconomic position (SEP) on health are well documented. A limited number of recent studies suggest that SEP may itself play a role in the epidemiology of disease and death associated with exposure to air pollution. Together with evidence that poor and working-class communities are often more exposed...

In this work we characterize risk perception in Chile, based on the psychometric paradigm, exploring the difference between perceived social and personal risk. For this purpose, we conducted a survey including 54 hazards, 16 risk attributes, and 3 risk constructs. The survey, divided into four parts, was administered to 508 residents of Santiago, C...

While local air pollution has been a public concern in developing countries for some time, climate change is looked upon as a non-urgent, developed world problem. In this work we present a case study of the interaction of measures to abate air pollution and measures to mitigate GHG emissions in Santiago, Chile, with the purpose of determining if th...

Many analyses have been conducted worldwide to estimate the health benefits from air pollution abatement. A key issue in the estimation of these benefits is the unit risk, or the slope of the concentration-response function. Among all effects, premature mortality is with no doubt the most important. When local studies (i.e. studies conducted in the...

Forty-nine experts from 18 industrial and developing countries met on 6 September 2001 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, to discuss the economic and public health impacts of air pollution, particularly with respect to assessing the public health benefits from technologies and policies that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Such measures woul...

The adoption of readily available measures to lower GHG emissions in Santiago, Mexico City, São Paulo, and New York over the next two decades would also provide major public health benefits from associated reductions in particulate matter and ozone ambient concentrations. Improved technologies to reduce fossil-fuel combustion could reduce these co...

To investigate the potential local health benefits of adopting greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies, we develop scenarios of GHG mitigation for México City, México; Santiago, Chile; São Paulo, Brazil; and New York, New York, USA using air pollution health impact factors appropriate to each city. We estimate that the adoption of readily availabl...

In this paper we report on two applications of the willingness-to-pay (WTP) approach to valuing transport externalities in Santiago, Chile. The first involves a contingent valuation study of mortality risk due in part to pollution-related causes, and the second, a stated preference study for valuing the reduction of risk from road fatalities. It is...

Daily counts of non-accidental deaths in Santiago, Chile, from 1988 to 1996 were regressed on six air pollutants--fine particles (PM2.5), coarse particles (PM10-2.5), CO, SO2, NO2, and O3. Controlling for seasonal and meteorological conditions was done using three different models--a generalized linear model, a generalized additive model, and a gen...

Políticas internacionales de limitación de emisiones de gases efecto invernadero en el período 2008-2012 pueden tener importantes efectos en la economía chilena. Durante este período,los países menos desarrollados no están sujetos a ningún tipo de control sobre estas emisiones, pero pueden participar en forma voluntaria, ya sea a nivel de proyectos...

In this paper we explore the potential for, and application of, Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) methods for valuing transport externalities in less developed countries. We outline examples of monetary valuation, the contexts in which they are applied and the extent to which they are given official support. Two applications of the WTP approach in Santiago,...

An expression relating the distribution of concentrations of air pollutants to the emission levels is derived and applied to the study of the air pollution problem of Santiago de Chile. Features specific to the area, like the geography and meteorology are included in a stochastic framework. The resulting distribution is simple. It has two parameter...