Regional and county flows of particulate matter damage in the US

Abstract

Despite several decades of declining emissions, the health costs of particulate matter (PM2.5) in the US remain substantial, with more than $1 trillion in annual damages. We analyze the inter-county impacts of PM2.5 for 2008, 2011, and 2014 and find that even though emissions from point sources have fallen over this period, the share of PM2.5 attributable to pollution transported across county and state boundaries is still considerable in many localities. Importantly, the benefits of reduced emissions are not uniformly distributed nationwide, with 26% of counties—concentrated in the South, Midwest, and Pacific Northwest—experiencing worsening health damages since 2008. Around 30% of all US counties receive 90% of their health damages from emissions in other counties, and these damage-importing counties also tend to have lower median incomes. Our results support continued state and federal cooperation to meet air quality standards and reduce the damages caused by PM2.5 from transported air pollution.

COVID-19 pandemic reveals persistent disparities in nitrogen dioxide pollution

“…A dverse air quality is an environmental justice issue, as it disproportionately affects marginalized and disenfranchised populations around the world (1)(2)(3)(4). Growing evidence suggests that these populations experience more air pollution than is caused by their consumption (5)(6)(7). Within the United States, disparities in exposure are persistent, despite successful regulatory measures that have reduced pollution (8,9).…”

Expected Health Effects of Reduced Air Pollution from COVID-19 Social Distancing

“…Next, estimates of emission reductions are based on emissions rates per unit of travel or on observed emissions from power plants. Finally, the health effects of the reductions in emissions are calculated from the AP3 integrated assessment model [5,24,25]. AP3 maps emissions of different primary pollutants from different sources (counties or point sources) into ambient concentrations of secondary pollutants at receptor counties and uses dose-response relationships and county-specific demographics to calculate expected deaths from the emissions.…”

“…Whether the emission changes manifest within a particular month, or as an evenly distributed change throughout the year does not affect the relationship between emissions and annual average concentrations in the AP3 model. The ability of the AP3 model to reliably reproduce observed annual average concentrations at USEPA's monitoring across the contiguous United States has been documented in prior work [24,31]. The approach to modeling the relationship between emissions, annual average concentrations, and subsequent health impact calculations used in the present study has been used in numerous studies [33], Chapter 5, page 10).…”

“…The polynomial was fit to daily predictions from the CAMx chemical transport model. References [24,25] report the quality of the PM 2.5 predictions in AP3. The third step uses population and mortality rate data (from the U.S. Census and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) by age-group and county to estimate exposures in 2014.…”

Nationwide and Regional PM2.5‐Related Air Quality Health Benefits From the Removal of Energy‐Related Emissions in the United States

“…Similarly, Sergi et al. (2020) found that about 70% of health damages from PM 2.5 exposure in the US in 2008, 2011, and 2014 were due to emissions from counties other than the county in which damages occurred and 32% were due to emissions from states other than the state in which damages occurred in 2014.…”