Skip to main content

Advertisement

SpringerLink
Log in

Air Quality in Lanzhou, a Major Industrial City in China: Characteristics of Air Pollution and Review of Existing Evidence from Air Pollution and Health Studies

  • Published:
Water, Air, & Soil Pollution Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Air pollution contributes substantially to global health burdens; however, less is known about pollution patterns in China and whether they differ from those elsewhere. We evaluated temporal and spatial heterogeneity of air pollution in Lanzhou, an urban Chinese city (April 2009–December 2012), and conducted a systematic review of literature on air pollution and health in Lanzhou. Average levels were 141.5, 42.3, and 47.2 μg/m3 for particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter ≤10 μm (PM10), NO2, and SO2, respectively. Findings suggest some seasonality, particularly for SO2, with higher concentrations during colder months relative to warmer months, although a longer time frame of data is needed to evaluate seasonality fully. Correlation coefficients generally declined with distance between monitors, while coefficients of divergence increased with distance. However, these trends were not statistically significant. PM10 levels exceeded Chinese and other health-based standards and guidelines. The review identified 13 studies on outdoor air pollution and health. Although limited, the studies indicate that air pollution is associated with increased risk of health outcomes in Lanzhou. These studies and the high air pollution levels suggest potentially serious health consequences. Findings can provide guidance to future epidemiological studies, monitor placement programs, and air quality policies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Andrews, S. Q. (2008). Inconsistencies in air quality metrics: ‘Blue Sky’ days and PM10 concentrations in Beijing. Environmental Research Letters 3(3),034009. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/3/3/034009.

  • Armstrong, P. (2013). Airports, schools remain closed as thick smog blankets Chinese city of Harbin. CNN. Oct. 22, 2013.

  • Bell, M. L., Peng, R. D., & Dominici, F. (2006). The exposure-response curve for ozone and risk of mortality and the adequacy of current ozone regulations. Environmental Health Perspectives, 114, 532–536.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, M. L., Ebisu, K., & Belanger, K. (2007a). Ambient air pollution and low birth weight in Connecticut and Massachusetts. Environmental Health Perspectives, 115, 1118–1124.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Bell, M. L., Dominici, F., Ebisu, K., Zeger, S. L., & Samet, J. M. (2007b). Spatial and temporal variation in PM2.5 chemical composition in the United States for health effects studies. Environmental Health Perspectives, 115, 989–995.

  • Bell, M. L., Ebisu, K., & Peng, R. D. (2011). Community-level spatial heterogeneity of chemical constituent levels of fine particulates and implications for epidemiological research. Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 21, 372–384.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Bravo, M. A., & Bell, M. L. (2011). Spatial heterogeneity of PM10 and O3 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and implications for human health studies. Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association, 61, 69–77.

  • Cao, G. Y., Chen, G., Pang, L. H., Zheng, X. Y., & Nilsson, S. (2012). Urban growth in China: past, prospect, and its impacts. Population and Environment, 33, 137–160.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chan, C. K., & Yao, X. (2008). Air pollution in mega cities in China. Atmospheric Environment, 42, 1–42.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Chen, J. X., & Sun, K. (2010). Continued advancement at the Lanzhou smelter. TMS Light Metals, 365–367.

  • Chen, Y., Jin, G. Z., Kumar, N., & Shi, G. (2013). The promise of Beijing: evaluating the impact of the 2008 Olympic Games on air quality. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 66, 424–443.

  • Chiu, R. L. H. (2012). Urban sustainability and the urban forms of China’s leading mega cities: Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Urban Policy and Research, 30, 359–383.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Chu, P. C., Chen, Y., & Lu, S. (2008a). Atmospheric effects on winter SO2 pollution in Lanzhou, China. Atmospheric Research, 89, 365–373.

  • Chu, P. C., Chen, Y., Lu, S., Li, Z., & Lu, Y. (2008b). Particulate air pollution in Lanzhou China. Environment International, 34, 698–713.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, A. J., Anderson, H. R., Ostro, B., Pandey, K. D., Krzyzanowski, M., Kunzli, N., Gutschmidt, K., Pope, A., Romieu, I., Samet, J. M., & Smith, K. (2005). The global burden of disease due to outdoor air pollution. Journal of Toxicology and Environmental Health. Part A, 68, 1301–1307.

  • Costabile, F., Bertoni, G., De Santis, F., Bellagotti, R., Ciuchini, C., Vichi, F., & Allegrini, I. (2010). Spatial distribution of urban air pollution in Lanzhou, China. Open Environmental Pollution & Toxicology Journal, 2, 8–15.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Dominici, F., McDermott, A., Zeger, S. L., & Samet, J. M. (2003). National maps of the effects of particulate matter on mortality: exploring geographical variation. Environmental Health Perspectives, 111, 39–44.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Dominici, F., Peng, R. D., Bell, M. L., Pham, L., McDermott, A., Zeger, S. L., & Samet, J. M. (2006). Fine particulate air pollution and hospital admission for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. JAMA, 295, 1127–1134.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Feng, X., & Wang, S. (2012). Influence of different weather events on concentrations of particulate matter with different sizes in Lanzhou, China. Journal of Environmental Sciences (China), 24, 665–674.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Global Burden of Disease (2010). GBD compare. http://viz.healthmtricsandevaluation.org/gbd-compare. Accessed 22 Feb 2014.

  • Global Burden of Disease (2014). Global health data exchange. http://ghdx.healthmetricsandevaluation.org/. Accessed 17 Feb 2014.

  • Gu, C., & Han, S. (2010). Climate change and China’s mega urban regions. Frontiers of Architecture and Civil Engineering in China, 4, 418–430.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Guo, X. R., Cheng, S. Y., Chen, D. S., Zhou, Y., & Wang, H. Y. (2010). Estimation of economic costs of particulate air pollution from road transport in China. Atmospheric Environment, 44, 3369–3377.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Guo, Y., Li, S., Tian, Z., Pan, X., Zhang, J., & Williams, G. (2013). The burden of air pollution on years of life lost in Beijing, China, 2004–08: retrospective regression analysis of daily deaths. BMJ, 347, f7139.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hou, Q., An, X. Q., Wang, Z. F., Wang, Y., & Sun, Z. B. (2011). Assessment of health economic costs of particulate air pollution in Lanzhou during 2002–2009. Zhongguo Huanjing Kexue (China Environmental Science), 31, 1398–1402.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jo, W. K., Yoon, I. H., & Nam, C. W. (2000). Analysis of air pollution in two major Korean cities: trends, seasonal variations, daily 1-hour maximum versus other hour-based concentrations, and standard exceedances. Environmental Pollution, 110, 11–18.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Krudysz, M., Moore, K., Geller, M., Sioutas, C., & Froines, J. (2009). Intra-community spatial variability of particulate matter size distributions in Southern California/Los Angeles. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 9, 1061–1075.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Kurokawa, J., Ohara, T., Morikawa, T., Hanayama, S., Janssens-Maenhout, J., Fukui, T., Kawashima, K., & Akimoto, H. (2013). Emissions of air pollutions and greenhouse gases over Asian regions during 2000–2008: Regional Emission inventory in ASia (REAS) version 2. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discovery, 13, 10049–10123.

  • Li, G., Li, Z., Wang, C., & Li, X. (2010). Study on urban development and climate change of Lanzhou City from 1978 to 2000. 2010 4th International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering, doi:10.1109/ICBBE.2010.5515335.

  • Lie, M. (2007). Lanzhou to walk off pollution. China Daily.

  • Lin, J., Pan, D., Davis, S. J., Zhang, Q., He, K., Wang, C., Streets, D. G., Wuebbles, D. J., & Guan, D. (2014). China’s international trade and air pollution in the United States. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 111, 1736–1741.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Lopez, A. D., Mathers, C. D., Ezzati, M., Jamison, D. T., & Murray, C. J. (2006). Global and regional burden of disease and risk factors, 2001: systematic analysis of population health data. Lancet, 367, 1747–1757.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ma, Y. X. (2013). Characteristics and causes of air pollution in Lanzhou, China. Applied Mechanics Materials, 260–261, 808–814.

    Google Scholar 

  • Marr, L. C., & Harley, R. A. (2002). Modeling the effect of weekday-weekend differences in motor vehicle emissions on photochemical air pollution in central California. Environmental Science and Technology, 36, 4099–4106.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China. (1996). Ambient air quality standard, GB3095-1996. Beijing, China.

  • Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China. (2014). http://www.mep.gov.cn/gkml/hbb/qt/201408/t20140811_287666.htm. Accessed 11 July 2012.

  • Niu, S., Zhang, X., Zhao, C., Ding, Y., Niu, Y., & Christensen, T. H. (2011). Household energy use and emission reduction effects of energy conversion in Lanzhou city, China. Renewable Energy, 36, 1431–1436.

  • O’Neill, M. S., Jerrett, M., Kawachi, I., Levy, J. I., Cohen, A. J., Gouveia, N., Wilkinson, P., Fletcher, T., Cifuentes, L., Schwartz, J., Workshop on Air Pollution, & Socioeconomic Conditions. (2003). Health, wealth, and air pollution: advancing theory and methods. Environmental Health Perspectives, 111, 1861–1870.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • O’Neill, M. S., Bell, M. L., Ranjit, N., Cifuentes, L. A., Loomis, D., Gouveia, N., & Borja-Aburto, V. H. (2008). Air pollution and mortality in Latin America: the role of education. Epidemiology, 19, 810–819.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pan, J. H., & Yang, W. M. (2013). Spatiotemporal pattern of urban heat island in Lanzhou of Northwest China based on fractal net evolution approach and spectral mixture analysis. Chinese Journal of Ecology, 32, 178–185.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peng, R. D., & Bell, M. L. (2010). Spatial misalignment in time series studies of air pollution and health data. Biostatistics, 11, 720–740.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Pinto, J. P., Lefohn, A. S., & Shadwick, D. S. (2004). Spatial variability of PM2.5 in urban areas in the United States. Journal of the Air and Waste Management Association, 54, 440–449.

  • Qi, B., Zhang, Z. Y., Zhu, X. Y., Ma, M. Q., & Ding, X. (2001). Environment and Atmospheric Pollution. Gansu Province: Gansu Nationality Press.

  • Qian, Z., Chapman, R. S., Tian, Q., Chen, Y., Lioy, P. J., & Zhang, J. (2000). Effects of air pollution on children’s respiratory health in three Chinese cities. Archives of Environmental Health, 55, 126–133.

  • Qian, Z., Zhang, J., Wei, F., Wilson, W. E., & Chapman, R. S. (2001). Long-term ambient air pollution levels in four Chinese cities: inter-city and intra-city concentration gradients for epidemiological studies. Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology, 11, 341–351.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Qian, Z., Chapman, R. S., Hu, W., Wei, F., Korn, L. R., & Zhang, J. J. (2004a). Using air pollution based community clusters to explore air pollution health effects in children. Environment International, 30, 611–620.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Qian, Z., Zhang, J. J., Korn, L. R., Wei, F., & Chapman, R. S. (2004b). Exposure-response relationships between lifetime exposure to residential coal smoke and respiratory symptoms and illnesses in Chinese children. Journal of Exposure Analysis and Environmental Epidemiology, 14(Suppl 1), S78–S84.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Qin, Y., Shi, P., Zhou, J., & Guo, H. (2011). The impact of urbanization on the surface temperature in Lanzhou during the period of 1951–2010. 2011 International Conference on Multimedia Technology, ICMT 2011849–854.

  • SciVerse (2012). Scopus. http://www.scopus.com/home.url. Accessed 30 Oct 2012.

  • She, F., Guo, Y., Wang, S., & Shang, K. (2011). Characteristics of atmospheric pollution during 2001∼2009 in Lanzhou, Northwest China. International Conference on Remote Sensing, Environment and Transportation Engineering, RSETE. Nanjing, China.

  • Son, J. Y., Lee, J. T., Kim, K. H., Jung, K., & Bell, M. L. (2012). Characterization of fine particulate matter and associations between particulate chemical constituents and mortality in Seoul, Korea. Environmental Health Perspectives, 120, 872–878.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Sun, Z., An, X., Tao, Y., & Hou, Q. (2013). Assessment of population exposure to PM10 for respiratory disease in Lanzhou (China) and its health-related economic costs based on GIS. BMC Public Health 13. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-13-891.

  • Ta, W., Wang, T., Xiao, H., Zhu, X., & Xiao, Z. (2004). Gaseous and particulate air pollution in the Lanshou Valley, China. Science of the Total Environment, 320, 163–176.

  • Tao, Y., An, X., Sun, Z., Hou, Q., & Wang, Y. (2012). Association between dust weather and number of admissions for patients with respiratory diseases in spring in Lanzhou. Science of the Total Environment, 423, 8–11.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Tao, Y., Yang, D. R., Lan, L. N., Wang, H. X., & Wang, S. G. (2013). Relationship between air pollutant and respiratory diseases hospitalization in Lanzhou. Zhongguo Huanjing Kexue/China Environmental Science, 33, 175–180.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Tao, Y., Mi, S., Zhou, S., Wang, S., & Xie, X. (2014). Air pollution and hospital admissions for respiratory diseases in Lanzhou, China. Environmental Pollution, 185, 196–201.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2012) National Ambient Air Quality Standards. http://www.epa.gov/air/criteria.html. Accesed 11 July 2012.

  • U.S. National Library of Medicine. (2012). PubMed. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/. Accessed 30 Oct 2012.

  • Wang, Y., & Deng, Y. (2013). The influences of industry development on the urban environment in Beijing, China. Applied Mechanics and Materials, 260, 731–737.

  • Wang, S., Feng, X., Zeng, X., Ma, Y., & Shang, K. (2009). A study on variations of concentrations of particulate matter with different sizes in Lanzhou, China. Atmospheric Environment, 43, 2823–2828.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Wang, Z., Yan, J., Wang, S., & Hu, Z. (2010). Impact of air pollution on daily respiratory hospitalization in Lanzhou, China. 4th International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedical Engineering, iCBBE 2010. Chengdu, China.

  • Wang, M., Zheng, S., Wang, S., Tao, Y., & Shang, K. (2012). A time-series study on the relationship between gaseous air pollutants and daily hospitalization of respiratory disease in Lanzhou City. Wei Sheng Yan Jiu, 41, 771–775.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wei, J., Guo, X., Marinova, D., & Fan, J. (2014). Industrial SO2 pollution and agricultural losses in China: evidence from heavy air polluters. Journal of Cleaner Production, 64, 404–413.

  • WHO. (2006). Air quality guidelines for particulate matter, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, and sulfur dioxide. Geneva: WHO.

    Google Scholar 

  • WHO. (2011) Air Quality and Health Fact Sheet 313. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/index. Accessed 15 Sep 2011.

  • Wilson, J. G., Kingham, S., & Sturman, A. P. (2006). Intraurban variations in PM10 air pollution in Christchurch, New Zealand: implications for epidemiological studies. Science of the Total Environment, 367, 559–572.

  • Wong, E. (2014). ‘Airpocalypse’ smog hits Beijing at dangerous levels. New York: The New York Times.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wong, C. M., Vichit-Vadakan, N., Kan, H., & Qian, Z. (2008). Public Health and Air Pollution in Asia (PAPA): a multicity study of short-term effects of air pollution on mortality. Environmental Health Perspectives, 116, 1195–1202.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Wongphatarakul, V., Friedlander, S. K., & Pinto, J. P. (1998). A comparative study of PM2.5 ambient aerosol chemical databases. Environmental Science and Technology, 32, 3926–3934.

  • Wu, S., Deng, F., Wei, H., Huang, J., Wang, X., Hao, Y., Zheng, C., Qin, Y., Lv, H., Shima, M., & Guo, X. (2014). Association of cardiopulmonary health effects with source-apportioned ambient fine particulate in Beijing, China: a combined analysis from the Healthy Volunteer Natural Relocation (HVNR) study. Environmental Science & Technolog. 48, 3438-3448.

  • Xie, Y. W., Ma, A. G., & Wang, H. (2010). Lanzhou urban growth prediction based on cellular automata. 2010 18th International Conference on Geoinformatics.

  • Zhang, W. J., Sun, Y. L., Zhuang, G. S., & Xu, D. Q. (2006). Characteristics and seasonal variations of PM2.5, PM10, and TSP aerosol in Beijing. Biomedical and Environmental Sciences, 19, 461–468.

  • Zhang, L., Han, G., Chen, H., Ma, M. G., & Guo, H. D. (2008). Study on heavy metal contaminants in soil come from coal mining spoil in the Loess Plateau. Journal of China Coal Society 10.

  • Zhang, X., Yang, L., Li, Y.., Li, H., Wang, W., & Ye, B. X. (2012). Impacts of lead/zinc mining and smelting on the environment and human health in China. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, 184, 2261–2273.

  • Zhang, Z., Wang, J., Chen, L., Chen, X., Sun, G., Zhong, N., Kan, H., & Lu, W. (2013). Impact of haze and air pollution-related hazards on hospital admissions in Guangzhou, China. Environmental Science and Pollution Research International, 21, 4236-4244.

  • Zhao, X., Niu, J., Wang, Y., Yan, C., Wang, X., & Wang, J. (1998). Genotoxicity and chronic health effects of automobile exhaust: a study on the traffic policemen in the city of Lanzhou. Mutation Research, 415, 185–190.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zhao, B., Wang, S., Dong, X., Wang, J., Duan, L., Fu, X., Hao, J., & Fu, J. (2013). Environmental effects of the recent emission changes in China: implications for particulate matter pollution and soil acidification. Environmental Research Letters. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024031.

  • Zhao, X., Sun, Z., Ruan, Y., Yan, J., Mukherjee, B., Yang, F., Duan, F., Sun, L., Liang, R., Lian, H., Zhang, S., Fang, Q., Gu, D., Brook, J.R., Sun, Q., Brook, R.D., Rajagopalan, S., & Fan, Z. (2014). Personal black carbon exposure influences ambulatory blood pressure: air pollution and cardiometabolic disease (AIRCMD-China) Study. Hypertension , 63, 871-877.

  • Zheng, S., Wang, M. Z., Wang, S. G., Tao, Y., & Shang, K. Z. (2012). A case-crossover analysis of air pollution and hospital admissions for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in Lanzhou. China Environmental Science, 32, 1182–1187.

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zheng, S., Wang, M., Wang, S., Tao, Y., & Shang, K. (2013). Short-term effects of gaseous pollutants and particulate matter on daily hospital admissions for cardio-cerebrovascular disease in Lanzhou: evidence from a heavily polluted city in China. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 10, 462–477.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

  • Zhu, W., Wang, J., Zhang, W., & Sun, D. (2012). Short-term effects of air pollution on lower respiratory diseases and forecasting by the group method of data handling. Atmospheric Environment, 51, 29–38.

    Article  CAS  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering and Mechanics, Lanzhou University, 222 Tianshui South Road, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Yaqun Zhang

  2. Gansu Provincial Design and Research Institute of Environmental Science, 225 Yanerwan Road, Chengguan District, Lanzhou, 730020, China

    Yaqun Zhang, Yanwen Xu, Donghong Guan, Chengyuan Wang, Mingxia Chen, Xiao Wang & Wei Tao

  3. Gansu Provincial Environmental Monitoring Central Station, 225 Yanerwan Road, Chengguan District, Lanzhou, 730020, China

    Min Li

  4. School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, 195 Prospect St, New Haven, CT, 06511, USA

    Mercedes A. Bravo, Lan Jin, Amruta Nori-Sarma & Michelle L. Bell

  5. Gansu Provincial Maternity and Child Care Hospital, 143 Qilihe North Road, Lanzhou, 730050, China

    Weitao Qiu

  6. Yale School of Public Health, 60 College St, New Haven, CT, 06520, USA

    Yawei Zhang & Michelle L. Bell

Authors
  1. Yaqun Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Min Li
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Mercedes A. Bravo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Lan Jin
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Amruta Nori-Sarma
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Yanwen Xu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Donghong Guan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Chengyuan Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Mingxia Chen
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  10. Xiao Wang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  11. Wei Tao
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  12. Weitao Qiu
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  13. Yawei Zhang
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  14. Michelle L. Bell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michelle L. Bell.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

ESM 1

(PDF 424 kb)

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Zhang, Y., Li, M., Bravo, M.A. et al. Air Quality in Lanzhou, a Major Industrial City in China: Characteristics of Air Pollution and Review of Existing Evidence from Air Pollution and Health Studies. Water Air Soil Pollut 225, 2187 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-014-2187-3

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11270-014-2187-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation