Elsevier

Atmospheric Environment

Volume 173, January 2018, Pages 223-230
Atmospheric Environment

Ground-level ozone pollution and its health impacts in China

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2017.11.014Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Ozone concentrations in China were simulated by WRF-CMAQ models.

  • The exposure level was evaluated based on county-level demographic data.

  • Spatial variations of concentrations from multiple methods were compared.

  • Three methods were used to estimate the mortality of COPD in China, 2015.

Abstract

In recent years, ground-level ozone pollution in China has become an increasingly prominent problem. This study simulated and analyzed spatiotemporal distribution of ozone and exposure level by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)-Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) models and monitoring data from 1516 national air quality monitoring stations in China during 2015. The simulation results show that the Sichuan Basin, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, Yangtze River Delta (YRD), Pearl River Delta (PRD) and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) region had relatively high average annual concentrations of ozone. The regions with more than 10% nonattainment days of 160 μg/m3 (daily maximum 8-h) are mainly concentrated in BTH, Shandong Peninsula and YRD, where large seasonal variations were also found. Exposure levels were calculated based on population data and simulated ozone concentrations. The cumulative population exposed to daily maximum 8-h concentration greater than or equal to 100 μg/m3 was 816.04 million, 61.17% of the total. Three methods were used to estimate the mortality of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) attributable to ozone. A comparative study using different exposure concentrations and threshold concentrations found large variations among these methods, although they were all peer-reviewed methods. The estimated mortality of COPD caused by ozone in China in 2015 ranged from 55341 to 80280, which mainly distributed in Beijing, Shandong, Henan, Hubei and Sichuan Province, the YRD and PRD region.

Introduction

Ground-level ozone, one of six criteria air pollutants prescribed by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA), is a secondary pollutant detrimental to human health and vegetation (Avnery et al., 2011, Lefohn et al., 2017, US EPA, 2006, US EPA, 2013). It is formed in the atmosphere by the reaction of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) in the presence of sunlight. To date, surface ozone is considered as the most damaging air pollutant in terms of adverse effects on human health, vegetation, crops and materials in Europe and may become worse in the future (Mills et al., 2011, Sicard et al., 2017).

In recent years, China's smog pollution has aroused wide public concern around the world (Liu and He, 2016). PM2.5 control, not ozone control, is the first priority in China. Although all the emission control measures have benefits on reducing precursors of ozone, the inappropriate ratio of NOx and VOCs reduction ratio can actually lead to an increasing of ground-level ozone concentration (Liu et al., 2013). From June 2016 to August 2016, ozone has replaced particulate matter PM10 and PM2.5 as the chief pollutant in the three major city clusters: Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH), Yangtze River Delta (YRD) and Pearl River Delta (PRD) (CNEMC, 2016). The 90th percentile of daily maximum 8-h ozone average concentrations of Beijing increased from 183.4 μg/m3 in 2013 to 202.6 μg/m3 in 2015, which exceeds Grade II Standard (160 μg/m3) up to 27% (BMEPB, 2013, BMEPB, 2015). In the PRD, the annual average ground-level ozone mixing ratio increased from 48 μg/m3 in 2006 to 58 μg/m3 in 2014 (Ou et al., 2016). According to the analysis of the formation mechanism of ozone (Geng et al., 2008, Simon et al., 2015), it is possible that due to meteorological factors and high VOCs/NOx ratio, resulting a beneficial condition for the formation of ground-level ozone. As well as high temperature increase reaction rates including all the precursors, usually promoting ozone level, meteorological elements, such as pressure, relative humidity, cloud cover and incoming solar radiation, are also closely related to each other and all affect ozone chemical reaction (Doherty et al., 2013, Pu et al., 2017).

Over the last two decades, Health Impact Assessment has been introduced to study potential short-term effects of common air pollutants on human health (Geravandi et al., 2017, Goudarzi et al., 2017, Khaniabadi et al., 2017). A large number of epidemiological studies have found that ground-level ozone pollution can induce a series of adverse health effects, including the incidence and mortality of respiratory diseases (Bates, 2005, Bell et al., 2004, Ito et al., 2005, Jerrett et al., 2009, Tao et al., 2012). WHO and other studies demonstrated short-term ozone mortality impacts by meta-analysis and obtained the concentration-response factor (CRF) for mortality of different diseases (WHO, 2001, WHO, 2004, Cairncross et al., 2007, Sicard et al., 2012, Bell et al., 2004, Bell et al., 2005, Ito et al., 2005). For human health protection, the exposure-response functions are based on relative risk values, i.e. probability of developing a disease for a given health endpoint associated with a 10 μg/m3 increase of the air pollutants concentration (Cairncross et al., 2007, Sicard et al., 2012). These functions are calculated under a procedure for health impact assessment for a study area and published by the WHO (WHO, 2001, WHO, 2004) for daily maximum 8-h and daily maximum 1-h ozone concentrations. For daily maximum 8-h, the average relative risk for morbidity COPD is 1.0086 and 1.004 and 1.000 for mortality for cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, respectively. But the overall consistency of the available data correlating exposure to ozone and mortality was questioned by the reviews of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA, 2007). The study by Jerrett et al. (2009) provided the first clear evidence for ozone long-term health impact based on maximum 1-h concentrations and the results widely used in follow-up important studies. Anenberg et al. (2010) estimated the global premature death caused by anthropogenic ozone based on the association between long-term ozone exposure and relative risk (RR) of death from respiratory disease found by Jerrett et al. (2009). Global Burden of Disease Study 2010 also used the RR for their estimations. In addition, Lelieveld et al. (2013) used the RR to calculate global, regional and megacity premature mortality due to ozone.

This study used the monitoring data to analyze the ground-level ozone pollution conditions in 2015 and simulated national ozone concentrations and exposure by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF)-Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) models. Different methods were used to estimate the deaths of COPD attributed to ozone in China. At the same time, we also analyzed the uncertainty of the results. The significance of this study manifested in two aspects. First, to clarify the status quo of ozone pollution in mainland China and arouse more attention and research on this issue. Second, the results of this study and the follow-up study can provide support for understanding health impacts of ozone.

Section snippets

Comparing ozone concentrations by observation and simulation

This study takes China's mainland as the primary research area. Ground-level ozone monitoring data were collected from the China National Environmental Monitoring Center. We considered a minimum data capture of 75% of validated hourly data. The average values were reported for each monitoring station only when at least 75% of hourly observations were available. Compared with the China National Ambient Air Quality Standards, the numbers of exceedances for typical cities were calculated. Then we

Ozone pollution and exposure

The spatial distribution of annual average ozone concentration was shown in Fig. 1. The ADMA1 and the annual average daily maximum 8-h ozone concentration (ADMA8) was 107.72μg/m3and 91.06 μg/m3, respectively. The high concentration area is mainly distributed in the Sichuan Basin, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, BTH, YRD and PRD region. However, ozone formation mechanism may be different in each region. The monthly average of daily maximum 8-h ozone for several typical

Conclusions

The WRF-CMAQ model system was used to simulate national ozone pollution level. The analysis of the simulated and measured ozone concentrations in 2015 indicated that the model can accurately reproduce the spatial distributions of ozone. The Sichuan Basin, Shandong, Shanxi, Henan, Anhui, Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, YRD, PRD and BTH region had relatively high average annual concentrations. The nonattainment ratio of the Grade I standard of DMA8 in Qinghai, Gansu, Jiangsu, Henan and Hubei was more

Acknowledgments

This work was supported and funded by the Ministry of Environmental Protection of China, the National Nature Science Fund of China (41571447 and 91544110), the special fund of State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (16Y02ESPCT), the National Key R&D Program (2016YFC0201504) and the National Program on Key Basic Research Project (2014CB441301).

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