Inferring global surface HCHO concentrations from multisource hyperspectral satellites and their application to HCHO-related global cancer burden estimation

Wenjing Su; Qihou Hu; Yujia Chen; Jinan Lin; Chengxin Zhang; Cheng Liu

doi:10.1016/j.envint.2022.107600

Inferring global surface HCHO concentrations from multisource hyperspectral satellites and their application to HCHO-related global cancer burden estimation

Environ Int. 2022 Dec:170:107600. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2022.107600. Epub 2022 Oct 25.

Authors

Wenjing Su¹, Qihou Hu², Yujia Chen³, Jinan Lin³, Chengxin Zhang⁴, Cheng Liu⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
² Key Lab of Environmental Optics & Technology, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China. Electronic address: qhhu@aiofm.ac.cn.
³ Key Lab of Environmental Optics & Technology, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China.
⁴ Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
⁵ Key Lab of Environmental Optics & Technology, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China; Department of Precision Machinery and Precision Instrumentation, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China; Centre for Excellence in Regional Atmospheric Environment, Institute of Urban Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xiamen 361021, China; Key Laboratory of Precision Scientific Instrumentation of Anhui Higher Education Institutes, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China. Electronic address: chliu81@ustc.edu.cn.

PMID: 36335897
DOI: 10.1016/j.envint.2022.107600

Abstract

Formaldehyde (HCHO) is a toxic and hazardous air pollutant that widely exists in atmosphere. Insufficient spatial and temporal coverage of surface HCHO measurements is limiting studies on surface HCHO-related air quality management and health risk assessment. This study develops a method to derive global ground-level HCHO concentrations from satellite-based tropospheric HCHO columns using TM5-simulated surface-to-column conversion factor with coarse spatial resolution. The method improves the factor more representative in finer grids by constraining TM5-simulated vertical profile shapes with satellite HCHO columns. The surface HCHO concentrations derived by the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) show good correlation with in situ HCHO measurements (R = 0.59) from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency surface network. We investigated how surface HCHO relates to urbanization and population aggregation over seven regions with high HCHO pollution. The results show urban HCHO increases as a power function with population size in China, India, and West Asia. HCHO concentrations in rural aeras also present strong log-log relationship with population aggregation in China, India, the United States, and Europe. Moreover, OMPS-derived ground-level HCHO concentrations were used to estimate global cancer burden caused by long-term outdoor HCHO exposure. The results show that up to 418188 more people worldwide will develop this cancer during the human life cycle. The global cancer burden is mainly from the South-East Asia region (33.11 %) and the Western Pacific region (22.95 %). This cancer occurrence in India and China is ranked 1st and 2nd in the world due to the large population size and serious HCHO pollution. Besides, global surface HCHO concentrations and cancer burden derived from the Environmental Trace Gases Monitoring Instrument which is China's first hyperspectral space-based spectrometer are found similar patterns with that from OMPS. Our results provide new insight into the impact of population urbanization on HCHO pollution and global outdoor HCHO-caused health risks.

Keywords: Cancer; EMI; OMPS; Population; Satellite remote sensing; Surface formaldehyde.

MeSH terms

China
Humans
India
Neoplasms*
United States
United States Environmental Protection Agency
Urbanization*