Abstract
To evaluate the effect of China’s National Action Plan on Air Pollution (NAPAP), we assessed the health benefits of PM2.5 remediation under the NAPAP from 2013 to 2017 in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) area using a relative risk model with real PM2.5 monitoring data and recent statistical research data. The results revealed that the PM2.5 concentration in the BTH area decreased by 36 µg m–3 (34.0%) under the NAPAP. PM2.5-related mortality resulting from all causes, cardiovascular disease, respiratory disease and lung cancer decreased to 58.1–65.2% of that in 2013; 102,133 PM2.5-related deaths were avoided, indicating a greater efficacy than the U.S. Cross-State Air Pollution Rule. These results demonstrated that the NAPAP is effective and can be used by other countries as a reference in enacting similar statutes.
Highlights
The definition of particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) was established in 1997 by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency to protect public health (Liang et al, 2016)
The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of the National Action Plan on Air Pollution (NAPAP) by assessing the health benefits of PM2.5 remediation resulting from the NAPAP in the BTH area between 2013 and 2017
PM2.5 Concentration We found that under the NAPAP scenario, the PM2.5 concentration of each city in the BTH area improved significantly compared with that under the baseline scenario, suggesting that the NAPAP achieved its target
Summary
The definition of particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) was established in 1997 by the U.S Environmental Protection Agency to protect public health (Liang et al, 2016). Since China began monitoring the ambient air PM2.5 concentration nationwide in 2013, PM2.5 has rapidly replaced PM10 as the most common chief pollutant (Pui et al, 2014); the 2013 annual mean PM2.5 concentration of the 74 cities required to monitor ambient air PM2.5 concentration in Phase One (Phase Two for other cities began in 2016) was 72 μg m–3 (ranging from 26–160 μg m–3), and 95.9% of the cities failed to meet the secondary annual mean standard (35 μg m–3) for ambient air quality in China (Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China, 2012). PM2.5 pollution was especially serious in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) area (Zhang et al, 2017; Cai et al, 2018), where none of the 13 cities met the standard and 7 were listed among the 10 cities with the worst ambient air quality (Ministry of Ecology and Environment of the People’s Republic of China, 2014). The real effect of the NAPAP is still not clear
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