Particulate matter-attributable mortality and relationships with carbon dioxide in 250 urban areas worldwide

Abstract

Urban air pollution is high on global health and sustainability agendas, but information is limited on associated city-level disease burdens. We estimated fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) mortality in the 250 most populous cities worldwide using PM 2.5 concentrations, population, disease rates, and concentration-response relationships from the Global Burden of Disease 2016 Study. Only 8% of these cities had population-weighted mean concentrations below the World Health Organization guideline for annual average PM 2.5 . City-level PM 2.5 -attributable mortality rates ranged from 13–125 deaths per 100,000 people. PM 2.5 mortality rates and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emission rates were weakly positively correlated, with regional influences apparent from clustering of cities within each region. Across 82 cities globally, PM 2.5 concentrations and mortality rates were negatively associated with city gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, but we found no relationship between GDP per capita and CO 2 emissions rates. While results provide only a cross-sectional snapshot of cities worldwide, they point to opportunities for cities to realize climate, air quality, and health co-benefits through low-carbon development. Future work should examine drivers of the relationships (e.g. development stage, fuel mix for electricity generation and transportation, sector-specific PM 2.5 and CO 2 emissions) uncovered here and explore uncertainties to test the robustness of our conclusions.

Using Satellites to Track Indicators of Global Air Pollution and Climate Change Impacts: Lessons Learned From a NASA‐Supported Science‐Stakeholder Collaborative

“…The NASA HAQAST Indicators Tiger Team facilitated the transfer of global-scale satellite remote sensing and related data to stakeholders for tracking the world's progress toward mitigating air pollution and climate change. By the end of the year-long Tiger Team, population wildfire exposure had been incorporated into the latest Lancet Countdown report (Watts et al, 2019), the GBD Study and the State of Global Air are incorporating the new ozone concentrations (Chang et al, 2019;GBD 2017Risk Factor Collaborators, 2018 and are considering integrating the new NO 2 concentrations and asthma burdens (Achakulwisut et al, 2019), and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition and C40 Cities are using urban PM 2.5 mortality burdens (Anenberg et al, 2019) to inform city planning for air pollution and climate change mitigation. The Lancet Countdown is also incorporating our wildfire and green space estimates in future iterations.…”

“…City-level PM 2.5 mortality burden 10.1029/2020GH000270 GeoHealth estimates are increasingly of interest, as populations are growing in many cities where air quality is also worsening (United Nations, 2014;World Health Organization, 2016a). We therefore developed the first estimates of urban PM 2.5 mortality burdens for 250 cities worldwide, using methods that were consistent globally and compatible with the GBD Study (Anenberg et al, 2019). Our estimates were enabled by years of research that preceded our study to generate high-quality gridded (0.1°× 0.1°) estimates of surface PM 2.5 concentrations globally by integrating AOD observations from multiple satellites with global chemical transport models and ground observations (Shaddick et al, 2018;van Donkelaar et al, 2016).…”

The role of cities in reducing the cardiovascular impacts of environmental pollution in low- and middle-income countries

“…Cities in LMICs are most impacted by air pollution due to concentrated poverty, rapid industrialization, a lack of environmental regulations, and often limited enforcement of existing regulations. Urban air pollution in LMIC cities is up to 17 times higher than in Europe and North America [30,31], and many residents are additionally exposed to indoor and neighborhood air pollution from household solid fuel burning [30,32]. Exposure to PM 2.5 from solid fuel stoves is higher than that to outdoor PM 2.5 in most high-income countries [33], yet there is substantial overlap between indoor (solid fuel) and urban PM 2.5 exposures in LMICs.…”

Air pollution control strategies directly limiting national health damages in the US

“…Similar findings are also shown in China's Clean Air Action, which successfully reduced major air pollutants from 2010 to 2017, but as accompanied by 16% increases in CO 2 emissions 30 . Another study found that wealthier cities in North America have reduced their PM 2.5 concentrations and mortality burdens considerably in recent years, while their CO 2 emissions have not declined in parallel 31 . This largely one-way co-benefit pathway is because of differences in the major actions for controlling CO 2 versus other pollutant emissions 16 .…”