EAPSI: Examining the Long-term Health Benefits of the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Actions in Heavily Polluted Regions

该项目的总体目标是考察2013年《大气污染防治行动计划》在中国污染最严重、人口最稠密的地区之一--京津冀地区--的长期健康效益。该项目将在清华大学进行，在王树晓博士的指导下进行，王树晓是著名的空气污染研究专家。中国是进行空气污染研究的理想地点，因为它拥有丰富的资源，以及对这一课题的政治、科学和社会利益。该项目将研究中国新的综合空气污染政策对健康的好处，如减少心血管疾病或过早死亡，该政策已导致PM2.5值下降。空气污染是一个既影响发达国家又影响发展中国家的全球性环境问题，对当地空气质量和全球气候都有影响。因此，即使研究在中国进行，也会对全球社会产生影响。因为中国是空气污染的主要排放者之一，他就以下方面提供了可量化的信息：1)现有的污染水平，2)空气污染新政对空气质量的预期改善，3)估计的健康效益，将增进全球社会对这一重要问题的普遍和科学了解。该项目中使用了三个输入组件。第一个组成部分“社区多尺度空气质量(CMAQ)输出”将根据行动计划对环境PM2.5的变化进行估计。第二，人口统计数据将从中国的国家统计局收集。最后，可归因于PM2.5的过早死亡以及其他感兴趣的疾病后果的“浓度-反应函数(CRF)”将从流行病学文献和与中国相关的文献的专家综合中得出。CRF将代表PM2.5变化对感兴趣的健康结果发生率的影响。中国目前的情况--PM2.5浓度高度升高，大量受影响的个人，以及快速变化的污染控制措施--将为拟议的项目提供一些独特的情景调查。东亚和太平洋暑期学院计划下的这个奖项支持一名美国研究生的夏季研究，由美国国家科学基金会和中国科技部联合资助。

The overall objective of this project is to examine the long-term health benefits of the 2013 "Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan" in one of the most heavily polluted and populated regions in China: the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The project will be conducted at Tsinghua University under the mentorship of Dr. Shuxiao Wang, who is a noted expert in air pollution research. China is an ideal location to conduct air pollution research because of its available and abundant resources, as well as its political, scientific, and societal interests in the topic. This project will examine the health benefits, such as reduced cardiovascular outcome or premature deaths, of China's new comprehensive air pollution policy, which has resulted in reduced PM2.5 levels. Air pollution is a global environmental issue that is affecting both developed and developing countries, and has local air quality and also global climate impacts. Therefore, even though the research will be conducted in China, it will have impacts on the global community. Because China is one of the major emitters of air pollution, providing quantifiable information on: 1) existing pollution levels, 2) expected improvements in air quality from the new air pollution policy, and 3) estimated health benefits will enhance the global community's general and scientific understanding of this important issue. There are three input components to be used in the project. The first component, "Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) output" , will have estimates of changes in ambient PM2.5 under the action plan. Second, demographic data will be collected from the National Bureau of Statistics of China. Lastly, "concentration-response functions (CRFs)" for premature death attributable to PM2.5 as well as other disease outcomes of interest will be derived from the epidemiological literature and expert syntheses of literature relevant to China. CRFs will represent the effect of changes in PM2.5 on health outcome incidence of interest. China's current circumstance - highly elevated PM2.5 concentrations, a large number of affected individuals, and rapidly changing pollution control measures - will offer some unique scenarios to investigate under the proposed project.This award under the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes Program supports summer research by a U.S. graduate student and is jointly funded by NSF and the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.