Air pollution and early deaths in the United States. Part I: Quantifying the impact of major sectors in 2005
Introduction
Air pollution adversely affects human health (U.S. EPA, 2011a, WHO, 2006, COMEAP, 2010). The emission of pollutants into the atmosphere is an inherent by-product of combustion processes. Recent research has found that ambient concentrations of fine particulate matter (smaller than 2.5 μm in aerodynamic diameter, PM2.5) (Dockery et al., 1993, Pope, 2002, WHO, 2006) and ozone (Bell et al., 2004, Jerrett et al., 2009, WHO, 2008a) are associated with the incidence of premature mortality and morbidity outcomes. Although other anthropogenic air pollutants are recognized as causes of adverse health impacts, ground level PM2.5 and ozone exposure is currently considered the most significant known cause of early deaths related to poor outdoor air quality (U.S. EPA, 2011a). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that in 2010 there were ∼160,000 premature deaths in the U.S. due to PM2.5 exposure and ∼4300 deaths related to ozone exposure. Fann et al. (2012) estimated between 130,000 and 340,000 PM2.5-related early deaths in 2005, and between 4700 and 19,000 ozone-related early deaths.
In the U.S., air pollution is regulated by the Clean Air Act and its amendments (1970 through 1990), which enables the EPA to set national air quality standards for six criteria air pollutants including PM2.5 and ozone (U.S. EPA, 2011a). The Environmental Protection Agency estimated that in 2012 about 74 million people in the U.S. are exposed to levels of PM2.5 higher than the limit standard and that more than 131 million live in regions not compliant with maximum allowable ozone levels (U.S. EPA, 2012a, U.S. EPA, 2012b). The EPA computed the costs for the implementation of the 1990 Clean Air Act to be about 65 billion dollars, with a potential benefit reaching 2 trillion dollars from 1990 to 2020, potentially avoiding ∼230,000 premature deaths in 2020 (U.S. EPA, 2011a). Although the CAA90 policy-implementation costs are distributed among different source categories, the attribution of air quality-related premature mortalities to different sectors has not been quantified in the peer-reviewed literature. An assessment of the early deaths attributable to different sources would create the potential to drive specific policies with the aim of maximizing the health benefits related to emission reductions from a certain economic activity. In the U.S., anthropogenic combustion emissions represent the predominant source of ground level PM2.5 and ozone concentrations (U.S. EPA, 2011a).
In the first part of the present study we evaluate premature deaths attributable to U.S. combustion emissions represented by the following sectors: electric power generation, industry, commercial/residential activities, road transport, marine transport and rail transport. The contribution of PM2.5 and ozone-related mortalities is quantified to inform policy makers about opportunities to diversify regulations by taking into account the health impact caused by different types of human activities. The second part of the study (Part II) will focus on assessing future-year combustion emissions impacts from different sectors and on future possible mitigation strategies.
Section snippets
Data and methodology
The health impacts of combustion emissions from different sectors are evaluated through the derivation of a temporally, spatially and chemically resolved emissions inventory in the contiguous United States (CONUS), and parts of Canada and Mexico for the reference year 2005. Meteorology and air quality models are used to relate emissions to pollutant concentrations. A baseline simulation, including all emission sources, is performed to assess the model capability to predict meteorological
Model evaluation
Meteorological and air quality simulations are validated against observations using a set of statistical metrics recommended by the EPA (U.S. EPA, 2005). The definitions for each of the metrics can be found in Yim and Barrett (2012): in particular, an index of agreement (IA) of 1 indicates perfect agreement between the model and the available observations.
Overall the simulated meteorology and air quality statistics, shown in Table 2, are within the range or close to recent studies adopted for
Discussion
The spatial distribution and speciation of PM2.5 impacts per sector can be used to inform the design of sector-specific emission mitigation measures. Premature mortalities from sulfate attributable to power plants represent approximately half of the ∼52,000 mortalities from the sector. These mortalities are mainly related to SOx emissions from coal power plants, and could be reduced by promoting the purchase of low-sulfur content coal from the western deposits in the Powder River Basin in
Conclusions
Combustion emissions in the U.S. are found to be responsible for ∼200,000 premature mortalities due to long-term exposure to increased PM2.5 concentrations, and ∼10,600 premature mortalities due to exposure to increased ozone concentrations. The totals computed do not consider non-linearities in the model response (e. g., in the formation of secondary PM2.5). This effect is expected to be relatively small, potentially yielding an underestimation in total mortalities of the order of 6%, as found
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