Residential energy use emissions dominate health impacts from exposure to ambient particulate matter in India.
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29434294.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-018-02986-7 and PMC identifier 5809377.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM<sub>2.5</sub>) is a leading contributor to diseases in India. Previous studies analysing emission source attributions were restricted by coarse model resolution and limited PM<sub>2.5</sub> observations. We use a regional model informed by new observations to make the first high-resolution study of the sector-specific disease burden from ambient PM<sub>2.5</sub> exposure in India. Observed annual mean PM<sub>2.5</sub> concentrations exceed 100 μg m<sup>-3</sup> and are well simulated by the model. We calculate that the emissions from residential energy use dominate (52%) population-weighted annual mean PM<sub>2.5</sub> concentrations, and are attributed to 511,000 (95UI: 340,000-697,000) premature mortalities annually. However, removing residential energy use emissions would avert only 256,000 (95UI: 162,000-340,000), due to the non-linear exposure-response relationship causing health effects to saturate at high PM<sub>2.5</sub> concentrations. Consequently, large reductions in emissions will be required to reduce the health burden from ambient PM<sub>2.5</sub> exposure in India.
Medical subject headings
- Air Pollutants
- Gasoline
- Particulate Matter