The clean heating renovation has been executed for improving particulate matter (PM) pollution in northern China since 2017. This study determined particle size distributions of nitrated phenols (NPs) in personal exposure samples and their associations with biomarkers in saliva and urine from homemakers in rural households of the Fenwei Plain, China. Remarkable reductions of 28.6-66.3% and 52.2-82.4% on PMs and total quantified NPs, respectively, were found with the substitutions of raw coal chunk and biomass by advanced clean coal. 4-Nitroguaiacol (4NG) showed the largest reductions of 81.2% among individual NP. In addition, the clean coal efficiently reduced interleukin-6 (IL-6) and 8-hydrox-2'-deoxyguanosine (8-OHdG) in the urine and saliva by 12-72%. Furthermore, significant positive correlations between urinary 8-OHdG with most of NPs in all particle sizes, urinary IL-6 with 4NG for particles with Dp > 2.5 μm and Dp = 0.25-1.0 μm and salivary IL-6 with 4-nitrocatechol and 4-methyl-5-nitrocatechol for particles with Dp > 2.5 μm, Dp = 0.5-1.0 μm, and Dp < 0.25 μm were observed but not for salivary 8-OHdG or PMs. The results provide scientific support for the clean energy reformation and demonstrate the strong particle size dependence between NPs and biomarkers.
Keywords: clean energy renovations; health effect; nitrated phenols; particle size distributions; reduction rate.