Evaluating the contribution of Fire Emissions to Transboundary Air Pollution and public health risks in the Asia-Pacific region

2012年发表的具有开创性意义的《全球疾病负担》(GBD)研究强调了环境特殊物质污染与对公共健康的不利影响的相关性，在发达国家和发展中国家的非传染性疾病(NCD)中都位居前十。虽然人们非常重视研究，以更好地了解和确定减少主要人为排放源(如道路运输、航运、家庭生物质燃烧)造成的空气污染的战略，但森林火灾(在世界不同地区也称为野火或丛林大火)没有得到那么多的关注。尽管野火的发生没有任何人为影响，但最近的一篇论文研究了全球范围内空气污染造成的预期寿命损失与其他风险因素的比较，结果表明，在所有野火排放中，只有10%可以归类为自然排放。其他研究表明了野火的复杂性和趋势，特别是在南亚和东南亚国家。与此同时，迄今为止，对越境空气污染对公众健康影响的模拟研究大多集中在北半球，很少有数据支持对更广泛的亚太地区(APR)的火灾事件对空气质量的贡献的可靠评估。评估火灾排放对亚太地区越境空气污染和公共健康风险的贡献(EFETAP)汇集了来自英国、澳大利亚、印度尼西亚和马来西亚的研究人员，以解决与该地区野火和其他生物质燃烧对越境空气污染的贡献有关的关键问题。为了实现这一目标，EFETAP将改进全球应用和广泛使用的最先进的大气化学输送模式中火灾排放及其贡献的表示，以确定火灾排放对APR空气污染事件的贡献的规模。其次，在更好地了解APR中细颗粒物浓度的来源和组成的基础上，卫生研究人员将探索更好地整合环境和健康数据集的效用，以确定关键驱动因素和潜在的干预点，以制定减少对公众健康影响的战略。最后，EFETAP旨在尝试开发一个框架，对APR的PM2.5污染事件进行短期预测，以更好地了解导致严重雾霾事件的污染物的组成和来源。为了实现这些目标，EFETAP汇集了一个由来自4个国家(英国、澳大利亚、印度尼西亚和马来西亚)的5个学术机构和2个研究机构组成的国际跨学科团队。这一新的伙伴关系将现有的双边合作结合成一个强大的综合团队，具有互补的专业知识和跨越学科和国家边界的丰富经验。这种伙伴关系的力量还在于所有伙伴与更广泛的研究领域的关系，包括与国家和国际资助机构和科学基金会、联合国欧洲经济委员会(及其《空气公约》，为全球越境空气污染评估奠定了基础)、世界卫生组织和联合国环境规划署的密切联系。PI、Co-I和项目伙伴建立了良好的关系和网络，通过工作人员的时间和专业知识带来了可观的附加值和实物贡献，这将进一步增加这一新伙伴关系的杠杆作用。该项目将举办两次研讨会，一次在澳大利亚，一次在英国，以吸引更广泛的学术界、研究资助机构和政策制定者，以确保研究结果可供研究界获取和采纳，并为未来的国际跨学科资助呼吁提供信息。

The seminal 2012 publication of the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study highlighted the relevance of ambient particular matter pollution for adverse effects on public health, ranking within the top ten of non-communicable diseases (NCD) in both developed and developing countries. While much emphasis has been placed on research to better understand and identify strategies to reduce air pollution from key anthropogenic emission sources (e.g. road transport, shipping, household biomass burning), forest fires (also referred to as wildfires or bushfires in different parts of the world) did not get as much attention. Despite the occurrence of wildfires without any human influence, a recent paper researching the loss of life expectancy from air pollution compared to other risk factors at a global scale indicates that only 10% of all wildfire emissions can be classed as 'natural'. Other studies illustrate the complexity and trends in wildfires particularly in South and South East Asian countries. At the same time, most research into modelling effects of transboundary air pollution on public health has to date focused on the Northern Hemisphere, with very little data available to underpin robust assessments of the contribution of fire events on air quality in the wider Asia-Pacific Region (APR). Evaluating the contribution of Fire Emissions to Transboundary Air Pollution and public health risks in the Asia-Pacific region (EFETAP) brings together researchers from the UK, Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia to address the critical questions related to the contributions to transboundary air pollution from wildfires and other biomass burning in the region. To achieve this, EFETAP will improve the representation of fire emissions and their contribution in a globally applied and widely used state-of-the-art atmospheric chemistry transport model to determine the scale of the contribution of fire emissions to air pollution episodes in the APR. Secondly, building on a better understanding of the origin and composition of fine particulate matter concentrations in the APR, health researchers will explore the utility of better integrating environmental and health datasets to identify key drivers and potential intervention points for strategies to reduce public health impacts. Finally, EFETAP aims to trial the development of a framework for short-term forecasting of PM2.5 pollution episodes in the APR, providing better insight into the composition and origin of the pollutants driving severe haze events.In order to achieve these objectives, EFETAP brings together an international, interdisciplinary team comprising five academic institutions and two research institutes from 4 countries (UK, Australia, Indonesia, and Malaysia). This new partnership combines existing bilateral collaborations into a strong, integrated team with complementary expertise and ample experience in working across discipline and country boundaries. The strength of this partnership lies as well in the relationships of all partners to the wider research landscape, including close ties with national and international funding agencies and science foundations, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (with its Air Convention, which has laid the foundations for transboundary air pollution assessment globally), the World Health Organisation and the United Nations Environment Programme. The PI, Co-I and project partners are well established and networked, bringing considerable added value and in-kind contributions through staff time and expertise, which will further add to the leveraging power of this new partnership. The project will convene two workshops, one in Australia and one in the UK to engage the wider academic community, research funding agencies and policy makers to ensure that the findings are accessible and taken up by the research community, and informs future international, interdisciplinary funding calls.