Intercontinental impacts of ozone pollution on human mortality.
Journal Article (Journal Article)
Ozone exposure is associated with negative health impacts, including premature mortality. Observations and modeling studies demonstrate that emissions from one continent influence ozone air quality over other continents. We estimate the premature mortalities avoided from surface ozone decreases obtained via combined 20% reductions of anthropogenic nitrogen oxide, nonmethane volatile organic compound, and carbon monoxide emissions in North America (NA), EastAsia (EA), South Asia (SA), and Europe (EU). We use estimates of ozone responses to these emission changes from several atmospheric chemical transportmodels combined with a health impactfunction. Foreign emission reductions contribute approximately 30%, 30%, 20%, and >50% of the mortalities avoided by reducing precursor emissions in all regions together in NA, EA, SA and EU, respectively. Reducing emissions in NA and EU avoids more mortalities outside the source region than within, owing in part to larger populations in foreign regions. Lowering the global methane abundance by 20% reduces mortality mostin SA,followed by EU, EA, and NA. For some source-receptor pairs, there is greater uncertainty in our estimated avoided mortalities associated with the modeled ozone responses to emission changes than with the health impact function parameters.
Full Text
Duke Authors
Cited Authors
- Anenberg, SC; West, IJ; Fiore, AM; Jaffe, DA; Prather, MJ; Bergmann, D; Cuvelier, K; Dentener, FJ; Duncan, BN; Gauss, M; Hess, P; Jonson, JE; Lupu, A; Mackenzie, IA; Marmer, E; Park, RJ; Sanderson, MG; Schultz, M; Shindell, DT; Szopa, S; Vivanco, MG; Wild, O; Zeng, G
Published Date
- September 2009
Published In
Volume / Issue
- 43 / 17
Start / End Page
- 6482 - 6487
PubMed ID
- 19764205
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1520-5851
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0013-936X
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
- 10.1021/es900518z
Language
- eng