Assessing the health impacts of PM2.5 and ozone pollution and their comprehensive correlation in Chinese cities based on extended correlation coefficient

Zhirui Lu; Yang Guan; Chaofeng Shao; Ren Niu

doi:10.1016/j.ecoenv.2023.115125

Assessing the health impacts of PM_2.5 and ozone pollution and their comprehensive correlation in Chinese cities based on extended correlation coefficient

Ecotoxicol Environ Saf. 2023 Jun 16:262:115125. doi: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2023.115125. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Zhirui Lu¹, Yang Guan², Chaofeng Shao³, Ren Niu⁴

Affiliations

¹ College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China.
² Institute of Strategic Planning, Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, Beijing 100041, China; The Center for Beautiful China, Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, Beijing 100041, China.
³ College of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China. Electronic address: shaocf@nankai.edu.cn.
⁴ Institute of Strategic Planning, Chinese Academy of Environmental Planning, Beijing 100041, China. Electronic address: niuren@caep.org.cn.

PMID: 37331289
DOI: 10.1016/j.ecoenv.2023.115125

Abstract

The coordinated control of PM_2.5 and ozone pollution is becoming more and more important in the current and next stage of Chinese environmental pollution control. Existing studies are unable to provide sufficient quantitative assessments of the correlation of PM_2.5 and ozone pollution to support the coordinated control of the two air pollutants. This study develops a systematic method to comprehensively assess the correlation between PM_2.5 and ozone pollution, including the evaluation of the impact of two air pollutants on human health and the extended correlation coefficient (ECC) for assessing the bivariate correlation index of PM_2.5-ozone pollution in Chinese cities. According to the latest studies on epidemiology conducted in China, we take cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases and respiratory diseases as the ozone pollution's health burden when evaluating the health impact of ozone pollution. The results show that the health impact of PM_2.5 in China decreases by 25.9 % from 2015 to 2021, while the health impact of ozone increases by 11.8 %. The ECC of 335 cities in China shows an increasing-decreasing trend but has generally increased from 2015 to 2021. The study provides important support for an in-depth understanding of the correlation and development trend of Chinese PM_2.5 and ozone pollution by classifying the comprehensive PM_2.5-ozone correlation performances of Chinese cities into four types. China or other countries will get better environmental benefits by implementing different coordinated management approaches for different correlative types of regions based on the assessment method in this study.

Keywords: Air pollution; Bivariate correlation index; China; Human health; Spatial agglomerating trend.