Antagonism between ambient ozone increase and urbanization-oriented population migration on Chinese cardiopulmonary mortality

Haitong Zhe Sun; Junchao Zhao; Xiang Liu; Minghao Qiu; Huizhong Shen; Serge Guillas; Chiara Giorio; Zosia Staniaszek; Pei Yu; Michelle W L Wan; Man Mei Chim; Kim Robin van Daalen; Yilin Li; Zhenze Liu; Mingtao Xia; Shengxian Ke; Haifan Zhao; Haikun Wang; Kebin He; Huan Liu; Yuming Guo; Alexander T Archibald

doi:10.1016/j.xinn.2023.100517

Antagonism between ambient ozone increase and urbanization-oriented population migration on Chinese cardiopulmonary mortality

Innovation (Camb). 2023 Sep 20;4(6):100517. doi: 10.1016/j.xinn.2023.100517. eCollection 2023 Nov 13.

Authors

Haitong Zhe Sun^{1

2

3}, Junchao Zhao⁴, Xiang Liu⁵, Minghao Qiu⁶, Huizhong Shen⁷, Serge Guillas^{8

9}, Chiara Giorio¹, Zosia Staniaszek¹, Pei Yu¹⁰, Michelle W L Wan¹, Man Mei Chim¹, Kim Robin van Daalen^{11

12

13}, Yilin Li¹, Zhenze Liu¹⁴, Mingtao Xia¹⁵, Shengxian Ke¹⁶, Haifan Zhao¹⁷, Haikun Wang⁵, Kebin He⁴, Huan Liu⁴, Yuming Guo¹⁰, Alexander T Archibald^{1

18}

Affiliations

¹ Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK.
² Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 3EQ, UK.
³ Department of Environmental Health and Engineering, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
⁴ State Key Joint Laboratory of ESPC, State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Sources and Control of Air Pollution Complex, School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
⁵ School of Atmospheric Sciences, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, China.
⁶ Department of Earth System Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA.
⁷ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.
⁸ Department of Statistical Science, University College London, London WC1E 6BT, UK.
⁹ The Alan Turing Institute, London NW1 2DB, UK.
¹⁰ School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC 3004, Australia.
¹¹ British Heart Foundation Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit, Department of Public Health and Primary Care, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB1 8RN, UK.
¹² Heart and Lung Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 0BD, UK.
¹³ Barcelona Supercomputing Center, Department of Earth Sciences, 08034 Barcelona, Spain.
¹⁴ School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology, Nanjing 210044, China.
¹⁵ Department of Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095, USA.
¹⁶ State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials of Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
¹⁷ Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK.
¹⁸ National Centre for Atmospheric Science, Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK.

Abstract

Ever-increasing ambient ozone (O₃) pollution in China has been exacerbating cardiopulmonary premature deaths. However, the urban-rural exposure inequity has seldom been explored. Here, we assess population-scale O₃ exposure and mortality burdens between 1990 and 2019 based on integrated pollution tracking and epidemiological evidence. We find Chinese population have been suffering from climbing O₃ exposure by 4.3 ± 2.8 ppb per decade as a result of rapid urbanization and growing prosperity of socioeconomic activities. Rural residents are broadly exposed to 9.8 ± 4.1 ppb higher ambient O₃ than the adjacent urban citizens, and thus urbanization-oriented migration compromises the exposure-associated mortality on total population. Cardiopulmonary excess premature deaths attributable to long-term O₃ exposure, 373,500 (95% uncertainty interval [UI]: 240,600-510,900) in 2019, is underestimated in previous studies due to ignorance of cardiovascular causes. Future O₃ pollution policy should focus more on rural population who are facing an aggravating threat of mortality risks to ameliorate environmental health injustice.