China's air quality improvement strategy may already be having a positive effect: evidence based on health risk...

Aiming to investigate the health risk impact of PM_2.5 pollution on a heavily populated province of China. The exposure response function was used to assess the health risk of PM_2.5 pollution. Results shows that the total number of premature deaths and diseases related to PM_2.5 pollution in Shandong might reach 159.8 thousand people based on the new WHO (2021) standards. The health effects of PM_2.5 pollution were more severe in men than in women. Five of the 16 cities in Shandong had higher health risks caused by PM_2.5 pollution, including LinYi, HeZe, JiNing, JiNan, and WeiFang. PM_2.5 pollution resulted in nearly 7.4 billions dollars in healthy economic cost, which accounted for 0.57% of GDP in Shandong in 2021. HeZe, LiaoCheng, ZaoZhuang, and LinYi were the cities where the health economic loss was more than 1% of the local GDP, accounted for 1.30, 1.26, 1.08, and 1.04%. Although the more rigorous assessment criteria, the baseline concentration was lowered by 30 μg/m³ compared to our previous study, there was no significant increase in health risks and economic losses. China's air quality improvement strategy may already be having a positive effect.