Current and Future Disease Burden From Ambient Ozone Exposure in India

Abstract

Long‐term ambient ozone (O3) exposure is a risk factor for human health. We estimate the source‐specific disease burden associated with long‐term O3 exposure in India at high spatial resolution using updated risk functions from the American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study II. We estimate 374,000 (95UI: 140,000–554,000) annual premature mortalities using the updated risk function in India in 2015, 200% larger than estimates using the earlier American Cancer Society Cancer Prevention Study II risk function. We find that land transport emissions dominate the source contribution to this disease burden (35%), followed by emissions from power generation (23%). With no change in emissions by 2050, we estimate 1,126,000 (95UI: 421,000–1,667,000) annual premature mortalities, an increase of 200% relative to 2015 due to population aging and growth increasing the number of people susceptible to air pollution. We find that the International Energy Agency New Policy Scenario provides small changes (+1%) to this increasing disease burden from the demographic transition. Under the International Energy Agency Clean Air Scenario we estimate 791,000 (95UI: 202,000–1,336,000) annual premature mortalities in 2050, avoiding 335,000 annual premature mortalities (45% of the increase) compared to the scenario of no emission change. Our study highlights that critical public health benefits are possible with stringent emission reductions, despite population growth and aging increasing the attributable disease burden from O3 exposure even under such strong emission reductions. The disease burden attributable to ambient fine particulate matter exposure dominates that from ambient O3 exposure in the present day, while in the future, they may be similar in magnitude.

Impacts of Global Solid Biofuel Stove Emissions on Ambient Air Quality and Human Health

“…These results are over 3 times higher than our study. Again, inclusion of residential coal combustion in the residential energy use sector as shown in Conibear et al (2018aConibear et al ( , 2018b for India and Zhao et al (2018) for China is the main reason leading to the lower estimates in our study. Moreover, Zhao et al (2018) considers household (indoor) air pollution as part of the associated PM 2.5 exposure estimates, whereas our study only focuses on ambient PM 2.5 and O 3 exposure.…”

“…At the national scale, annual total PM 2.5 and O 3 -induced premature deaths in India for the year 2010 from solid biofuel stove sector were 110,100 (95CI: 100,200), which agrees reasonably well with Chowdhury et al (2019), as shown in Figure 8b. However, Conibear et al (2018bConibear et al ( , 2018a reported that PM 2.5 -induced and O 3 -induced annual premature deaths associated with residential energy use for the year 2015 in India were 256,000 (95CI: 162,000-340,000) and 41,000 (95CI: 15,000-61,000), respectively, which were roughly a factor of 2.74 and 2.47 higher than the corresponding averaged annual total PM 2.5 -induced and O 3 -induced premature deaths associated with solid biofuel stove emissions in India from our study (Figure 8b). In China, Zhao et al (2018) estimated that there were about 400,000 (95CI: 250,000-640,000) annual avoided premature deaths for the year 2015 from the solid fuel use attributable to ambient and household PM 2.5 exposure (Figure 8c).…”

“…Globally, around 41% of households relied on solid fuels (including coal) for cooking in 2010 (Bonjour et al., 2013). Emissions from the global solid fuel sector negatively influence air quality (Archer‐Nicholls et al., 2016; Bonjour et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2016), climate change (Archer‐Nicholls et al., 2019; Butt et al., 2016; Huang et al., 2018; Kodros et al., 2015; Lacey et al., 2017), and human health (Anenberg et al., 2017a; Chafe et al., 2014; Conibear et al., 2018a, 2018b; Lacey et al., 2017; Zhao et al., 2018). A subsector of solid fuel is solid biofuel stove, which is defined as wood fuels, agriculture residues and dung used for household cooking, heating, and lighting (Huang et al., 2018).…”

“…Owing to the importance of solid biofuel stove emissions for regional ambient air quality, most of the published literature focuses on the associated PM 2.5 (particulate matter with aerodynamic diameter ≤2.5 μm) air quality impacts (Archer‐Nicholls et al., 2016; Carter et al., 2016; Chowdhury et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2016; Reddington et al., 2019). A limited number of studies report the impacts of solid fuel emissions on O 3 air quality (Conibear et al., 2018a; Rooney et al., 2019). However, none of these studies investigate the global PM 2.5 and O 3 air quality impacts associated with the solid biofuel stove sector, which underscores the necessity of a timely assessment of global impacts in order to gauge the benefits of clean cookstove interventions regionally, nationally, and globally (Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves, 2015), or promote clean household energy programs (Quinn et al., 2018).…”

Improving regional air quality predictions in the Indo-Gangetic Plain – case study of an intensive pollution episode in November 2017

“…1d). As a result, extreme pollution episodes not only cause PM-related health issues but also increase the risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) (the most important health outcome of ozone pollution) (Conibear et al, 2018b;US Environmental Protection Agency, 2013).…”