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Source sector and fuel contributions to ambient PM2.5 and attributable mortality across multiple spatial scales
- Source :
- Nature Communications, Vol 12, Iss 1, Pp 1-12 (2021)
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- Nature Portfolio, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is the world’s leading environmental health risk factor. Reducing the PM2.5 disease burden requires specific strategies that target dominant sources across multiple spatial scales. We provide a contemporary and comprehensive evaluation of sector- and fuel-specific contributions to this disease burden across 21 regions, 204 countries, and 200 sub-national areas by integrating 24 global atmospheric chemistry-transport model sensitivity simulations, high-resolution satellite-derived PM2.5 exposure estimates, and disease-specific concentration response relationships. Globally, 1.05 (95% Confidence Interval: 0.74–1.36) million deaths were avoidable in 2017 by eliminating fossil-fuel combustion (27.3% of the total PM2.5 burden), with coal contributing to over half. Other dominant global sources included residential (0.74 [0.52–0.95] million deaths; 19.2%), industrial (0.45 [0.32–0.58] million deaths; 11.7%), and energy (0.39 [0.28–0.51] million deaths; 10.2%) sectors. Our results show that regions with large anthropogenic contributions generally had the highest attributable deaths, suggesting substantial health benefits from replacing traditional energy sources. Ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is one of the most important environmental health risk factors in many regions. Here, the authors present an assessment of PM2.5 emission sources and the related health impacts across global to sub-national scales and find that over 1 million deaths were avoidable in 2017 by eliminating PM2.5 mass associated with fossil fuel combustion emissions.
- Subjects :
- Multidisciplinary
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Fine particulate
Science
General Physics and Astronomy
Fossil fuel combustion
General Chemistry
010501 environmental sciences
Health benefits
complex mixtures
01 natural sciences
General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
Environmental health
Environmental science
Attributable mortality
Environmental impact assessment
Energy source
Disease burden
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 20411723
- Volume :
- 12
- Issue :
- 1
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Nature Communications
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....0b32acda09aa26d3522cd52c385b23bf