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- Title
Achieving health-oriented air pollution control requires integrating unequal toxicities of industrial particles.
- Authors
Wu, Di; Zheng, Haotian; Li, Qing; Wang, Shuxiao; Zhao, Bin; Jin, Ling; Lyu, Rui; Li, Shengyue; Liu, Yuzhe; Chen, Xiu; Zhang, Fenfen; Wu, Qingru; Liu, Tonghao; Jiang, Jingkun; Wang, Lin; Li, Xiangdong; Chen, Jianmin; Hao, Jiming
- Abstract
Protecting human health from fine particulate matter (PM) pollution is the ambitious goal of clean air actions, but current control strategies largely ignore the role of source-specific PM toxicity. Here, we proposed health-oriented control strategies by integrating the unequal toxic potencies of the most polluting industrial PMs. Iron and steel industry (ISI)-emitted PM2.5 exhibit about one order of magnitude higher toxic potency than those of cement and power industries. Compared with the current mass-based control strategy (prioritizing implementation of ultralow emission standards in the power sector), the proposed health-oriented control strategy (priority control of the ISI sector) could generate 5.4 times higher reduction in population-weighted toxic potency-adjusted PM2.5 exposure among polluting industries in China. Furthermore, the marginal abatement cost per unit of toxic potency-adjusted mass of ISI-emitted PM2.5 is only a quarter of that of the other two sectors under ultralow emission scenarios. We highlight that a health-oriented air pollution control strategy is urgently required to achieve cost-effective reductions in particulate exposure risks. Health-oriented emissions reduction in China focusing on the iron and steel industry can reduce costs by 1.56 billion dollars while lowering the population-weighted toxic potency-adjusted exposure risk.
- Subjects
CHINA; AIR pollution control; AIR pollution; IRON industry; POLLUTION control costs; ENERGY industries; EMISSION standards
- Publication
Nature Communications, 2023, Vol 14, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
2041-1723
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/s41467-023-42089-6