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© 2018. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Ambient air pollution from ozone and fine particulate matter is associated with premature mortality. As emissions from one continent influence air quality over others, changes in emissions can also influence human health on other continents. We estimate global air-pollution-related premature mortality from exposure to PM2.5 and ozone and the avoided deaths due to 20 % anthropogenic emission reductions from six source regions, North America (NAM), Europe (EUR), South Asia (SAS), East Asia (EAS), Russia–Belarus–Ukraine (RBU), and the Middle East (MDE), three global emission sectors, power and industry (PIN), ground transportation (TRN), and residential (RES), and one global domain (GLO), using an ensemble of global chemical transport model simulations coordinated by the second phase of the Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollutants (TF HTAP2), and epidemiologically derived concentration response functions. We build on results from previous studies of TF HTAP by using improved atmospheric models driven by new estimates of 2010 anthropogenic emissions (excluding methane), with more source and receptor regions, new consideration of source sector impacts, and new epidemiological mortality functions. We estimate 290 000 (95 % confidence interval (CI): 30 000, 600 000) premature O3-related deaths and 2.8 million (0.5 million, 4.6 million) PM2.5-related premature deaths globally for the baseline year 2010. While 20 % emission reductions from one region generally lead to more avoided deaths within the source region than outside, reducing emissions from MDE and RBU can avoid more O3-related deaths outside of these regions than within, and reducing MDE emissions also avoids more PM2.5-related deaths outside of MDE than within. Our findings that most avoided O3-related deaths from emission reductions in NAM and EUR occur outside of those regions contrast with those of previous studies, while estimates of PM2.5-related deaths from NAM, EUR, SAS, and EAS emission reductions agree well. In addition, EUR, MDE, and RBU have more avoidedO3-related deaths from reducing foreign emissions than from domestic reductions. For six regional emission reductions, the total avoided extra-regional mortality is estimated as 6000 (-3400, 15 500) deaths per year and 25 100 (8200, 35 800) deaths per year through changes inO3 and PM2.5, respectively. Interregional transport of air pollutants leads to more deaths through changes in PM2.5 than inO3, even though O3 is transported more on interregional scales, since PM2.5 has a stronger influence on mortality. For NAM and EUR, our estimates of avoided mortality from regional and extra-regional emission reductions are comparable to those estimated by regional models for these same experiments. In sectoral emission reductions, TRN emissions account for the greatest fraction (26–53 % of global emission reduction) of O3-related premature deaths in most regions, in agreement with previous studies, except for EAS (58 %) and RBU (38 %) where PIN emissions dominate. In contrast, PIN emission reductions have the greatest fraction (38–78 % of global emission reduction) of PM2.5-related deaths in most regions, except for SAS (45 %) where RES emission dominates, which differs with previous studies in which RES emissions dominate global health impacts. The spread of air pollutant concentration changes across models contributes most to the overall uncertainty in estimated avoided deaths, highlighting the uncertainty in results based on a single model. Despite uncertainties, the health benefits of reduced intercontinental air pollution transport suggest that international cooperation may be desirable to mitigate pollution transported over long distances.

Details

Title
HTAP2 multi-model estimates of premature human mortality due to intercontinental transport of air pollution and emission sectors
Author
Ciao-Kai Liang 1 ; West, J Jason 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Silva, Raquel A 2 ; Bian, Huisheng 3 ; Chin, Mian 4 ; Davila, Yanko 5   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Dentener, Frank J 6   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Emmons, Louisa 7   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Flemming, Johannes 8   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Folberth, Gerd 9   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Henze, Daven 5 ; Im, Ulas 10   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Jonson, Jan Eiof 11 ; Keating, Terry J 12   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Kucsera, Tom 13 ; Lenzen, Allen 14 ; Lin, Meiyun 15   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Marianne Tronstad Lund 16   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Pan, Xiaohua 17   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Park, Rokjin J 18   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; R Bradley Pierce 19 ; Sekiya, Takashi 20 ; Sudo, Kengo 20   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Takemura, Toshihiko 21   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA 
 Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA 
 Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center, University of Maryland, Baltimore, MD, USA 
 Earth Sciences Division, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA 
 Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA 
 European Commission, Joint Research Center, Ispra, Italy 
 Atmospheric Chemistry Observations and Modeling Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), Boulder, CO, USA 
 European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts, Reading, UK 
 UK Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK 
10  Aarhus University, Department of Environmental Science, Frederiksborgvej, 399, Roskilde, Denmark 
11  Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Oslo, Norway 
12  US Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA 
13  Universities Space Research Association, NASA GESTAR, Columbia, MD, USA 
14  Space Science & Engineering Center, University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI, USA 
15  Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA 
16  CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Oslo, Norway 
17  Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA 
18  Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea 
19  NOAA National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service, Madison, WI, USA 
20  Nagoya University, Furocho, Chigusa-ku, Nagoya, Japan 
21  Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan 
Pages
10497-10520
Publication year
2018
Publication date
2018
Publisher
Copernicus GmbH
ISSN
16807316
e-ISSN
16807324
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2073309467
Copyright
© 2018. This work is published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.