Characterization of Fine Particulate Matter and Associated Health Burden in Nanjing

Abstract

Particulate matter (PM) air pollution has become a serious environmental problem in Nanjing and poses great health risks to local residents. In this study, characteristics of particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) over Nanjing were analyzed using hourly and daily averaged PM2.5 concentrations and meteorological parameters collected from nine national monitoring sites during the period of March 2014 to February 2017. Then, the integrated exposure-response (IER) model was applied to assess premature mortality, years of life lost (YLL) attributable to PM2.5, and mortality benefits due to PM2.5 reductions. The concentrations of PM2.5 varied among hours, seasons and years, which can be explained by differences in emission sources, secondary formations and meteorological conditions. The decreased ratio of PM2.5 to CO suggested that secondary contributions decreased while the relative contributions of vehicle exhaust increased from increased CO data. According to the values of attributable fractions (AF), stroke was the major cause of death, followed by ischemic heart disease (IHD), lung cancer (LC) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The estimated total deaths in Nanjing due to PM2.5 were 12,055 and 10,771, leading to 98,802 and 87,647 years of life lost in 2014 and 2015, respectively. The elderly and males had higher health risks than youngsters and females. When the PM2.5 concentrations meet the World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines (AQG) of 10 μg/m3, 84% of the premature deaths would be avoided, indicating that the Nanjing government needs to adopt more stringent measure to reduce PM pollution and enhance the health benefits.

Spatiotemporal Variations and Factors of Air Quality in Urban Central China during 2013–2015

“…The attributable fractions (AFs) of the ∆Mort attributable to PM 2.5 exposure in Hefei are 48% (44%), 32% (29%), 32% (26%), and 25% (21%) for STR, IHD, LC, and COPD in 2014 (2015), respectively ( Supplementary Table S1). Similar to previous studies, a particularly strong correlation is revealed between excess STR mortality and PM 2.5 exposure [48][49][50][51]. With reducing PM 2.5 concentrations, the avoidable ∆Mort caused by different diseases decreases correspondingly (Figure 9).…”

Changes of air quality and its associated health and economic burden in 31 provincial capital cities in China during COVID-19 pandemic

“…It is known that a wide range of adverse health outcomes including asthma, respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, lung cancer ( Cascio and Long 2018 ; Fuertes et al 2020 ; Guo et al 2019 ; Knibbs et al 2018 ; Rodriguez-Villamizar et al 2015 ; Sun et al 2019 ), etc., are associated with air pollution. While great efforts in recent years have been made to reduce air pollution in particularly fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) concentration, China is still suffering relatively heavy air pollution and potentially high health risks particularly in densely populated regions ( Nie et al 2018 ; Sahu et al 2020 ; Shen et al 2017 ; Shen et al 2020 ). Haze events still occurred due to that enhanced production of secondary aerosol components might compensate the reduced primary emissions ( Chang et al 2020 ; Huang et al 2020b ; Le et al 2020 ; Sun et al 2020 ; Wang et al 2020a ), yet an overall improvement of air quality was very probably during COVID-19 period ( Bao and Zhang 2020 ; Huang et al 2020a ; Shi and Brasseur 2020 ; Xu et al 2020b ).…”

Air Pollution Characteristics and Health Risks in the Yangtze River Economic Belt, China during Winter

“…Zhao et al explored the spatiotemporal variations of six criteria air pollutants and influencing factors (sources and meteorology conditions) in the city clusters of the Sichuan Basin, which are located on the upper reaches of the YREB, and the results indicated that both PM 2.5 and O 3 were simultaneously high in the West Sichuan Basin while PM 2.5 in the South Sichuan Basin was much higher than that in other regions [ 17 ]. Numerous joint studies on particulate and gaseous pollutants have been carried out in representative urban cities in the Yangtze River Delta region, located on the down reaches of the YREB, such as Shanghai and Nanjing [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 ]. In our earlier study, concentrating on three metropolises in the YREB, we checked the current air pollution status in Chongqing, Wuhan, and Nanjing and compared the results with earlier peer-reviewed studies [ 22 ].…”