Ship Emission Impacts on Air Quality and Human Health in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) Region, China, in 2015, With Projections to 2030

Abstract

Ship emissions contribute to air pollution, increasing the adverse health impacts on people living in coastal cities. We estimated the impacts caused by ship emissions, both on air quality and human health, in 2015 and future (2030) within the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region of China. In addition, we assessed the potential health benefits of implementing an Emission Control Area (ECA) in the region by predicting avoided premature mortality with and without an ECA. In 2015, ship emissions increased PM2.5 concentrations and O3 mixing ratios by 1.4 μg/m3 and 1.9 ppb, respectively, within the PRD region. This resulted in 466 and 346 excess premature acute deaths from PM2.5 and O3, respectively. Premature mortality from chronic exposures was even more significant, with 2,085 and 852 premature deaths from ship‐related PM2.5 and O3, respectively. In 2030, we projected the future ship emissions with and without an ECA, using two possible land scenarios. With an ECA, we predicted 76% reductions in SO2 and 13% reductions in NOx from the shipping sector. Assuming constant land emissions from 2015 in 2030 (2030 Constant scenario), we found that an ECA could avoid 811 PM2.5‐related and 108 O3‐related deaths from chronic exposures. Using 2030 Projected scenario for land emissions, we found that an ECA would avoid 1,194 PM2.5‐related and 160 O3‐related premature deaths in 2030. In both scenarios, implementing an ECA resulted in 30% fewer PM2.5‐related premature deaths and 10% fewer O3‐related premature deaths, illustrating the importance of reducing ship emissions.

Effects of marine fuel sulfur restrictions on particle number concentrations and size distributions in ship plumes at the Baltic Sea

“…CC BY 4.0 License. (Barregard et al, 2019;C. Chen et al, 2019;Partanen et al, 2013;Sofiev et al, 2018).…”

Emission Sector Impacts on Air Quality and Public Health in China From 2010 to 2020

“…These other sources include other anthropogenic sources inside China such as shipping, aviation, and agricultural fires, anthropogenic emissions outside China, and natural emission sources. Previous studies have estimated that dust contributes up to 10% of PM 2.5 concentrations in China (McDuffie et al., 2021 ; Shi et al., 2017 ; Yang et al., 2011 ), waste combustion up to 9% (McDuffie et al., 2021 ), fires up to 8% (C. Reddington et al., 2019 ; C. L. Reddington et al., 2021 ; Shi et al., 2017 ), biogenic secondary organic aerosol (SOA) up to 8% (Hu, Wang, et al., 2017 ; Shi et al., 2017 ), anthropogenic emissions outside China up to 3% (S. Liu, Xing, et al., 2020 ), shipping up to 3% (C. Chen et al., 2019 ; Dasadhikari et al., 2019 ; McDuffie et al., 2021 ; C. Reddington et al., 2019 ), aviation up to 1% (Dasadhikari et al., 2019 ; Zhang et al., 2017 ), and sea salt up to 1% (Shi et al., 2017 ). This would suggest the importance of other anthropogenic emission sources inside China (21% including fire as an anthropogenic source) and natural emissions (19%), with a smaller contribution from anthropogenic sources outside China (3%).…”

Ship emissions around China under gradually promoted control policies from 2016 to 2019

“…In addition to policy-driven emission changes, different ports showed distinct monthly emission variations that were highly related to their geographical location and ocean resources. For example, ship emissions in the YRD region had a low point in July as their activities were influenced by typhoons, particularly in the YRD (Weng et al, 2020), while ship emissions in Ningbo-Zhoushan Port, Tianjin Port and Shenzhen appeared to be larger in spring and autumn, probably owing to large-scale fishing ship operations (Chen et al, 2016;Yin et al, 2017). In addition, steep short-term increases in SO 2 emissions were observed for the Tianjin, Ningbo Zhoushan and Shenzhen ports in September 2019.…”