AAAR 33rd Annual Conference
October 20 - October 24, 2014
Rosen Shingle Creek
Orlando, Florida, USA
Abstract View
Reducing Global Mortality from PM$_(2.5)
JOSHUA APTE, Julian Marshall, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Abstract Number: 254 Working Group: Linking Aerosols with Public Health in a Changing World
Abstract We investigate the regional distribution of potential health benefits of major worldwide improvements in ambient fine particulate matter (PM$_(2.5)) concentrations. We develop high-resolution (10 km) global analyses of premature mortality attributable to ambient PM$_(2.5) (“PM mortality”) using data from the 2010 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) assessment, including recently developed supra-linear integrated-exposure response (IER) functions (Burnett et al., 2014, EHP 1307049). We address two questions with this model that can illuminate discussions about mitigating this major health risk: (1) How is the global population and global incidence of PM mortality distributed as a function of region and ambient concentrations; (2) how do potential mortality benefits of achieving ambitious PM$_(2.5) targets vary among world regions?
The shape of the IER relationship yields surprising conclusions about the global distribution of PM mortality. While PM mortality rates are high in the most polluted parts of the world (especially China and India), a notably large burden of disease (~40% of global PM mortality) also exists for regions with more moderate PM$_(2.5) levels (<=25 micro-g/m$^3) owing to the large populations that live in these areas (~63% of all humans). To achieve major (>50%) reductions in PM mortality in these regions (<=25 micro-g/m$^3) would likely require attaining concentrations even cleaner than the WHO PM$_(2.5) air quality guideline (10 micro-g/m$^3 annual average concentration). Globally, ~35% of total PM mortality would still remain if all regions above 10 micro-g/m$^3 achieved this target. For the most polluted areas of the world (mean concentration ~90 micro-g/m$^3; 8% of the population, 20% of all PM mortality), half of the PM mortality would remain even with a three-fold reduction in levels to ~30 micro-g/m$^3. Substantially reducing the burden of disease from ambient PM$_(2.5) will require aggressive mitigation in nearly all regions of the world.