Residential energy use emissions dominate health impacts from exposure to ambient particulate matter in India

Luke Conibear (), Edward W. Butt, Christoph Knote, Stephen R. Arnold and Dominick V. Spracklen
Additional contact information
Luke Conibear: University of Leeds
Edward W. Butt: University of Leeds
Christoph Knote: Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich
Stephen R. Arnold: University of Leeds
Dominick V. Spracklen: University of Leeds

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Exposure to ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is a leading contributor to diseases in India. Previous studies analysing emission source attributions were restricted by coarse model resolution and limited PM2.5 observations. We use a regional model informed by new observations to make the first high-resolution study of the sector-specific disease burden from ambient PM2.5 exposure in India. Observed annual mean PM2.5 concentrations exceed 100 μg m−3 and are well simulated by the model. We calculate that the emissions from residential energy use dominate (52%) population-weighted annual mean PM2.5 concentrations, and are attributed to 511,000 (95UI: 340,000–697,000) premature mortalities annually. However, removing residential energy use emissions would avert only 256,000 (95UI: 162,000–340,000), due to the non-linear exposure–response relationship causing health effects to saturate at high PM2.5 concentrations. Consequently, large reductions in emissions will be required to reduce the health burden from ambient PM2.5 exposure in India.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-02986-7 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-02986-7

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-02986-7

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().