AIR POLLUTION IN CHINA
Estimating the health benefit related to China’s air pollution control policy
Researchers
Huanbi Yue Brett Bryan Qingxu Huang Chunyang He
Change in pollution related deaths by region in China
Summary
Air pollution kills nearly 1 million people per year in China. In response, the Chinese government implemented the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan (APPCAP) from 2013 to 2017 which had a significant impact on reducing PM2.5 concentration. Costing about $270 billion, covering more than 300 cities all around China, involving in energy, industry, transport, legal and regulatory sectors, the APPCAP is by far the largest and most remarkable air pollution control action ever implemented. However, the health benefits of PM2.5 pollution reduction related to the APPCAP are not well understood and quantifying the impact of this policy is of great significance for future environmental policy design for achieving United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal 3 Target 3.9 substantially reduce the number of deaths and illnesses from hazardous chemicals and air, water and soil pollution and contamination. Our work comprehensively estimated the health effects of PM2.5 concentration decreasing resulted by the APPCAP. One of the great strengths of this study is that we differentiated the effect of different driving factors (i.e. PM2.5 concentration, age structure, population, death rate of diseases) on the changes in annual deaths attributable to PM2.5 pollution using the decomposition method pioneered by the landmark Global Burden of Disease study. In addition, we also generated the gridded deaths attributable to PM2.5 pollution dataset in China from 2000-2017, which can be widely used in decision making and further analysis.