Achieving health-oriented air pollution control requires integrating unequal toxicities of industrial particles

Abstract

Protecting human health from fine particulate matter (PM) pollution is the ambitious goal of clean air actions, but current control strategies largely ignore the role of source-specific PM toxicity. Here, we proposed health-oriented control strategies by integrating the unequal toxic potencies of the most polluting industrial PMs. Iron and steel industry (ISI)-emitted PM2.5 exhibit about one order of magnitude higher toxic potency than those of cement and power industries. Compared with the current mass-based control strategy (prioritizing implementation of ultralow emission standards in the power sector), the proposed health-oriented control strategy (priority control of the ISI sector) could generate 5.4 times higher reduction in population-weighted toxic potency-adjusted PM2.5 exposure among polluting industries in China. Furthermore, the marginal abatement cost per unit of toxic potency-adjusted mass of ISI-emitted PM2.5 is only a quarter of that of the other two sectors under ultralow emission scenarios. We highlight that a health-oriented air pollution control strategy is urgently required to achieve cost-effective reductions in particulate exposure risks.