Spatial-Temporal Dynamics of Disease Burden Attributable to Pm2.5 Exposure in China From 2000 to 2016
Abstract In recent years, long-term exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) has slowly increased both morbidity and mortality for Chinese people, becoming a leading problem for public health efforts. However, spatial-temporal dynamics of disease burden attributable to PM2.5 exposure still lacks a comprehensive evaluation so as to provide inadequate supports for policy making and improvement. Here, we used the exposure-response function to derive the spatial-temporal dynamics of disease burden attributable to PM2.5 pollution in China. We found the fact that economic loss attributable to PM2.5 increased by 93% from 35 billion Chinese Yuan (95% CI: 14-52) to 536 billion Chinese Yuan (95%CI: 236-753) during the period of 16 years. Digging further, we discovered a substantiate level of regional differences, with the disease burden being the most severe in East China and the least severe in the Northwest China. Other than that, there existed a spatial aggregation of health-related economic losses among Chinese cities. Our paper made an evaluation on the spatial-temporal dynamics of health effects attributed to PM2.5, an evaluation that could provide more insights to future policy making of the air pollution control for China and other developing countries.