Evaluating inter-continental transport of air pollution and its impacts on global health: Implications for regional and global cooperation to mitigate long-range trans-boundary transport of air pollution.
详细信息
文摘
Inter-continental (particularly trans-Pacific) transport of air pollution has been of increasing concern in recent decades. The successful implementation of the LRTAP protocols to mitigate the trans-boundary transport of air pollution among European countries, has led to discussions of the possibility of building a new hemispheric-scale agreement to regulate trans-boundary transport. What is lacking in current policy making is an adequate understanding of the inter-regional links among regional emissions and abatement costs, the inter-continental transport of air pollution and its related health impacts. This understanding is necessary for environmental policymakers to explore potential incentives among regions to cooperatively mitigate emissions and improve air quality over both local and downwind continents. This thesis comprehensively evaluates the linkages of inter-continental transport of air pollution among ten continental regions. It uses a global chemical tracer model (MOZART-2) as a tool to estimate the pathways, timescales, seasonal and inter-annual variability, and source-receptor relationships of inter-continental transport, and examines the extent to which public health on one continent is compromised by air pollution contributed from other continents.;The findings in this thesis indicate that inter-continental transport of fine aerosols exerts a significant health impact on downwind regions. In 2000, nearly 400,000 adult premature deaths were associated with exposure to aerosols transported inter-continentally. More than 1,100 premature deaths in North America were associated with trans-Pacific transport of East Asian aerosols. This health impact is expected to increase proportionally with the growth of East Asian aerosol emissions because this thesis finds a linear source-receptor relationship for long-range transport of aerosols.;A new quantity called the "Influence Potential" (IP) is defined to measure population weighted concentrations of a pollutant resulting from a unit change in emissions. This thesis demonstrates that, ignoring other political factors, regional cooperation among the East Asian countries and inter-regional cooperation in Europe, the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, and North Africa to jointly mitigate sulfur emissions could be cost-effective (based on both the IP values and the abatement costs for SO2 emissions among these regions) and would benefit public health throughout the northern hemisphere.