Abstract
ABSTRACT In this study, factor analysis and mass regression were used to identify four fine particulate matter sources and estimate their contributions to the ambient air pollution in Beijing. The identified sources were traffic re-suspended soil, mixed industrial sources, oil combustion, and secondary sulfate. The estimated source contributions were then introduced into two models as exposure variables to explore the relationships between cardiovascular responses in mice and PM exposures. We observed that PM2.5 has a small negative acute effect on heart rate, but the individual source factors showed much more significant effects. Traffic re-suspended soil had the most significant effect on heart rate, with a positive contribution on the day of exposure and a negative one on day lag 1. Acute heart rate variability outcomes were better explained by the total PM2.5 than by the source components. Chronic effects were observed as a decreased heart rate but an increased number of heart rate variability outcomes.
Highlights
The economic development and urbanization of Asia as whole, and China in particular, during past decades were accompanied by unprecedented growth in energy consumption, traffic, and pollution, creating a need for systematic assessment of the health effects of air pollution on populations in that region (HEI Report 18, 20)
We previously reported a good correlation between the black carbon (BC) concentrations measured by Aethalometer and elemental carbon (EC) measured by Sunset Lab on quartz filters (r2 = 0.67), with Aethalometer’s concentration being 2.8 times higher than those of EC as measured by Sunset Lab (Chen et al, 2010)
The mean PM2.5 mass concentration was 79.1 ± 59.2 μg m–3, where the large standard deviation indicated high temporal variability ranging from 5.4 to 334 μg m–3. These levels were compatible to those reported by others, during Olympic 45.2 ± 27.0, after Olympics, 80.4 ± 72.5 (Wu et al, 2010) indicating minimum particles loss in the exposure system
Summary
The economic development and urbanization of Asia as whole, and China in particular, during past decades were accompanied by unprecedented growth in energy consumption, traffic, and pollution, creating a need for systematic assessment of the health effects of air pollution on populations in that region (HEI Report 18, 20). The concerns about the health of athletes and international visitors to the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing, China, (held August 8–24 and September 6–16, respectively) prompted the Beijing municipal government to mitigate the ambient air pollution by relocating, limiting, Maciejczyk et al, Aerosol and Air Quality Research, 18: 1839–1852, 2018 or temporarily closing highly polluting, energy-intensive facilities in and around the city. Motor vehicle usage was reduced by 60% by restricting operation to only odd or even days (Wang et al, 2009). Proven effective, these drastic anti-pollution measures have been employed in past decade to produce “clear skies” for the foreign state officials’ visits and, most recently, the party congress (Zhou, 2017)
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