A111-0008
Black carbon pollution attributed sanitary impacts and targeting sustainable emission reduction for health-benefits over the South Asia Indo-Gangetic Plain

Friday, 11 December 2020
Poster
Shubha Verma, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India, Sanhita Ghosh, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Advanced Technology Development Center, Kharagpur, India, Olivier Boucher, Institut Pierre Simon Laplace, Paris, France, Rong Wang, Fudan University, Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Shanghai, China and Laurent Menut, Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique, Palaiseau Cedex, France
Abstract:
Black carbon (BC) aerosol pollutants mainly emitted from incomplete combustion processes are often adhered with toxic constituents. Health risks (per unit aerosol mass) are inferred as much as seven to eight times larger for BC than for bulk (non-speciated) particulate matter, PM mass (PM2.5 or PM10). There is thus value in targeting specifically BC emission abatement.

A large discrepancy between simulated and observed BC surface concentrations over the densely populated Indo-Gangetic Plain (IGP) in South Asia has so-far limited our ability to assess the magnitude of their sanitary impacts concerning population exposure, morbidity, and mortality. Here we present analysis from an integrated modeling framework designed to estimate the BC attributable sanitary impacts and target sustainable BC emission reduction for health benefits. The framework comprises of using an efficiently predicted BC surface concentration over the IGP as obtained in a high-resolution chemical transport model CHIMERE with observation-constrained BC emissions, in conjunction with population exposure to ambient BC, and consistent health functions for BC.

Analysis indicates more than 60 million people live over hotspots of BC concentration (winter monthly mean greater than 20 µg m-3), as identified prominently over urban areas in the eastern and northern IGP, in addition to that over semi-urban and a few semi-rural locations. More than 12 million people over the two megacities ( Kolkata and Delhi) being exposed to the extreme levels of BC concentration. The spatial mapping of the relative risk factor and cardiovascular mortality (CVM) attributable to wintertime BC exposure (CVMWINBC ) implied all populations over the IGP, including that in rural areas, are under the risk of BC-attributable health effects, with more than 100-inhabitants mortality per 10x10 km-2 over the BC hotspot locations.

A fraction of 62% of the total annual CVM for the megacity is found attributable to CVMWINBC, with about 50% of CVMWINBC in IGP existing for the semi-urban area. Health benefits from the sanitary impacts of BC are potentially attainable saving lives of about 0.4 million persons from CVMWINBC, conceptualizing the prioritized mitigation measures domain-wise, e.g., for the semi-urban and megacity, based on identified distinctive prevalent emission sources of BC aerosol.

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