Abstract
Air pollutants existing in the environment may have negative impacts on human health depending on their toxicity and concentrations. Remote sensing data enable researchers to map concentrations of various air pollutants over vast areas. By combining ground-level concentrations with population data, the spatial distribution of health impacts attributed to air pollutants can be acquired. This study took five highly populated and severely polluted provinces along the Huaihe River, China, as the research area. The ground-level concentrations of four major air pollutants including nitrogen dioxide (NO2), sulfate dioxide (SO2), particulate matters with diameter equal or less than 10 (PM10) or 2.5 micron (PM2.5) were estimated based on relevant remote sensing data using the geographically weighted regression (GWR) model. The health impacts of these pollutants were then assessed with the aid of co-located gridded population data. The results show that the annual average concentrations of ground-level NO2, SO2, PM10, and PM2.5 in 2016 were 31 µg/m3, 26 µg/m3, 100 µg/m3, and 59 µg/m3, respectively. In terms of the health impacts attributable to NO2, SO2, PM10, and PM2.5, there were 546, 1788, 10,595, and 8364 respiratory deaths, and 1221, 9666, 46,954, and 39,524 cardiovascular deaths, respectively. Northern Henan, west-central Shandong, southern Jiangsu, and Wuhan City in Hubei are prone to large health risks. Meanwhile, air pollutants have an overall greater impact on cardiovascular disease than respiratory disease, which is primarily attributable to the inhalable particle matters. Our findings provide a good reference to local decision makers for the implementation of further emission control strategies and possible health impacts assessment.
Highlights
Air pollutants refer to foreign substances that enter the near-surface or low-level atmospheric environment as a gaseous form
The NO2, SO2, and aerosol optical depth (AOD) values retrieved from satellite data reflect the air pollution status from the land surface to the top of the atmosphere
70% of the ambient monitoring station data were used for geographically weighted regression (GWR) modeling, and the remaining 30% were used for validation
Summary
Air pollutants refer to foreign substances that enter the near-surface or low-level atmospheric environment as a gaseous form. The sources can be divided into two categories: natural factors and human-induced factors. The latter is the dominant factor, and sources include industrial production, mineral combustion, automobile emissions, and so forth [1]. Many epidemiological studies have shown that air pollution in the environment has acute and chronic effects on mortality, morbidity, and hospitalization rate [2,3], and each pollutant has a certain exposure–response relationship with these health impacts [4,5]. If the PM2.5 concentration was reduced to the standard concentration of. Res. Public Health 2019, 16, 579; doi:10.3390/ijerph16040579 www.mdpi.com/journal/ijerph
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