Background: Quantifying future health burden attributed to fine particulate matters (PM2.5) and ozone (O3) in China is challenging when jointly accounting for emissions, climate and population changes. Future health burdens caused by PM2.5 and O3 in China remain largely understudied.
Methods: In this paper, we used the Goddard Earth Observing System chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) to project PM2.5 and O3 concentrations from 2010 to 2050 under four Representative Concentration Pathway scenarios (RCPs), then projected the PM2.5 and O3-related premature mortality and years of life lost (YLL) in this period. We then estimated the resulting economic burdens such as medical expenses (ME) and value of statistical life (VSL) in 2010-2050 attributed to the burdens of disease on PM2.5 and O3.
Results: Compared to the targeted year 2050, we found that PM2.5 concentrations changed between -31.5% to 14.5% since 2010, resulted in -13.5% to 9.4% change in PM2.5-related mortality and -25.7% to 0.6% change in YLL across all the RCPs scenarios. For O3, the concentrations varied -13.3% to 3.7% by 2050, contributing to -26.9% to 13.1% change in O3-related mortality and -48.8% to 4.0% change in YLL. The lowest health impacts occurred in the RCP4.5 scenario by 2050 for both pollutants. In 2010, the ME caused by PM2.5 and O3 was $6.3-6.5 billion, and the VSL was $112.1-114.9 billion, accounting for 2.9-3.0% of the total GDP ($3874 billion). By 2050, ME and VSL will change from -19.7% to 17.5% and from -65.5% to 136.6%, respectively.
Conclusion: This study suggested that future PM2.5 and O3 under certain RCP scenarios can have large health and economic benefits. However, given that the future population will always be higher than the baseline in 2010, more aggressive air pollution mitigation measures are needed for China.