Intercontinental Impacts of Ozone Pollution on Human Mortality

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, non-methane volatile organic compound, and carbon monoxide emissions in North America (NA), East Asia (EA), South Asia (SA), and Europe (EU). We use estimates of ozone responses to these emission changes from an ensemble of atmospheric chemical transport models combined with a health impact function. 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. Similarly, lowering the global methane abundance by 20% reduces mortality most in SA, followed by EA, EU, and NA. For some source-receptor pairs, the range in modeled ozone responses to emission changes contributes more to uncertainty in our estimated avoided mortalities than does the uncertainty associated with health impact function parameters.

CASPER ANENBERG Susan;  WEST Jason;  FIORE Arlene;  JAFFE Dan;  PRATHER Michael;  BERGMANN Daniel;  CUVELIER Cornelis;  DENTENER Franciscus;  DUNCAN Bryan N .;  GAUSS Michael;  HESS Peter;  JONSON Jan Eiof;  LUPU Alexandru;  MACKENZIE Ian;  PARK Rokjin;  MICHAEL Sanderson;  SCHULTZ Martin;  ¿SHINDELL Drew;  SZOPA Sophie;  GARCIA VIVANCO Marta;  WILD Oliver;  ZENG Guang;  MARMER E.; 

2009-09-23

AMER CHEMICAL SOC

JRC53156

0013-936X,   

http://pubs.acs.org,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC53156,   

10.1021/es900518z,