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Research on the spatial effects of haze pollution on public health: spatial–temporal evidence from the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations, China

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Han Sun at China University of Geosciences
Han Sun
Xiaohui Yang
Xiaohui Yang
Xiaohui Yang
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Zhihui Leng at China University of Geosciences
Zhihui Leng
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Abstract and Figures

Haze pollution poses a serious threat to residents’ health. In this study, a spatial econometric model of environmental health was established to investigate the direction, intensity, and spatial–temporal heterogeneity of the impact of haze pollution and its spillover effects on public health in 26 cities of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations from 2005 to 2018. The study found that (1) PM2.5 pollution and public health level all show the characteristic of positive spatial correlation and spatial clustering. (2) Haze pollution is the main influencing factor of residents’ public health level, with significant negative effects and obvious spillover effects. The urbanization rate, the number of health technicians, and the green area per capita have significant positive impacts on public health. (3) The spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the impact of haze pollution and other factors on public health is obvious. The negative correlation between PM2.5 pollution and public health in eastern cities is higher than that in other cities. Both urbanization rate and green area per capita have a greater positive impact on public health in the northeast of the Yangtze River Delta region. The improvement effect of the number of health technicians on the public health is stronger in the cities of Anhui Province. The research results of this paper provide certain support for the city governments to formulate targeted policies.
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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-19017-0
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Research onthespatial effects ofhaze pollution onpublic health:
spatial–temporal evidence fromtheYangtze River Delta urban
agglomerations, China
HanSun1,2· XiaohuiYang1 · ZhihuiLeng1
Received: 26 August 2021 / Accepted: 29 January 2022
© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022
Abstract
Haze pollution poses a serious threat to residents’ health. In this study, a spatial econometric model of environmental health was
established to investigate the direction, intensity, and spatial–temporal heterogeneity of the impact of haze pollution and its spillover
effects on public health in 26 cities of the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations from 2005 to 2018. The study found that (1)
PM2.5 pollution and public health level all show the characteristic of positive spatial correlation and spatial clustering. (2) Haze
pollution is the main influencing factor of residents’ public health level, with significant negative effects and obvious spillover
effects. The urbanization rate, the number of health technicians, and the green area per capita have significant positive impacts
on public health. (3) The spatial and temporal heterogeneity of the impact of haze pollution and other factors on public health is
obvious. The negative correlation between PM2.5 pollution and public health in eastern cities is higher than that in other cities.
Both urbanization rate and green area per capita have a greater positive impact on public health in the northeast of the Yangtze
River Delta region. The improvement effect of the number of health technicians on the public health is stronger in the cities of
Anhui Province. The research results of this paper provide certain support for the city governments to formulate targeted policies.
Keywords Haze pollution· Public health· Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations· Spatial effects· Spatial correlation·
Spatial and temporal heterogeneity
Introduction
For a long time, people have paid attention to economic
growth but neglected the value of environmental resources,
even at the expense of the environment to a certain extent,
resulting in increasingly prominent environmental pollution
problems. In the last decade, the cost of environmental pol-
lution control in China has reached 10% of GDP (Liu etal.
2017; Zeng etal. 2019b). As the largest developing country,
the serious air pollution problem faced by China has become
one of the major threats to the health status of the residents
(Guan etal. 2016; Hunter, 2020). Global Burden of Dis-
eases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study reveals that PM2.5
ranks sixth among the level 4 of mortality risk factors (Mur-
ray etal. 2020). Despite the remarkable results of the imple-
mentation of China’s “Air Pollution Prevention and Control
Action Plan (2013–2017),” there are still 17 provinces where
PM2.5 concentrations are not up to standard (Zheng and Xu,
2020). Numerous studies have confirmed that long-term
exposure to PM2.5 pollution is associated with higher rates of
COVID-19 transmission and mortality (Vasquez-Apestegui
etal. 2021; Wu etal. 2020). Severe haze pollution is expos-
ing people to major health risks. Moreover, the mobility of
air makes the externality of pollution even more significant,
and the regional pollution characteristics are obvious (Wang,
2014). It becomes very meaningful to consider the spatial
Responsible Editor: Lotfi Aleya
* Xiaohui Yang
1202010704@cug.edu.cn; 1063792986@qq.com
Han Sun
sunhan2004@126.com
Zhihui Leng
zhihui_leng@163.com
1 School ofEconomics andManagement, China University
ofGeosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan430074, China
2 Resource andEnvironmental Economics Research Center,
China University ofGeosciences (Wuhan), Wuhan430074,
China
/ Published online: 8 February 2022
Environmental Science and Pollution Research (2022) 29:44422–44441
1 3
Content courtesy of Springer Nature, terms of use apply. Rights reserved.
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  • Apr 2021
  • PROCESS SAF ENVIRON
On a global scale, the epidemic of the novel coronavirus (NCOV-2019) has become a major issue that is seriously harming human health and impairing the environment's quality. The current study examines the association between air pollution and NCOV-2019 in China, where cases of NCOV-2019 are correlated with deaths in public databases with data on air pollution tracked at multiple locations in different provinces of China. A negative binomial regression (NBR) model was applied to examine the difference between the number of people infected with NCOV-2019 and the number of deaths in China. The findings show that, after population density regulation, there is a positive connection between air pollutants concentration (particularly nitrogen dioxide) and the number of NCOV-2019 cases and deaths. Furthermore, PM2.5 is the key cause of NCOV-2019 cases and deaths in China. The results indicate that a 1% increase in the average of PM2.5 was correlated with an increase of 11.67% in NCOV-2019 cases and a rise of 18% in NCOV-2019 deaths. We concluded that a slight rise in air pollution has caused the number of NCOV-2019 cases and deaths to increase dramatically. This research provides a basis for future policies affected by this pandemic in terms of health and pollution.
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Clarifying the relationship among clean energy consumption, haze pollution and economic growth–based on the empirical analysis of China's Yangtze River Delta Region
Article
  • Dec 2020
  • ECOL COMPLEX
At present, the frequent occurrence of haze in China has attracted extensive attention around the world. However, there are few researches based on simultaneous equation model to evaluate the relationship among clean energy consumption, haze pollution and economic growth. Whether the relationship among clean energy consumption, haze pollution and economic growth can be clarified correctly is the core issue to achieve the goal of both haze control and high-quality economic development. The innovation of this study is to further explore the interaction mechanism among the three variables, simultaneous equation model is used to analyze the relationship of clean energy development, haze pollution and economic growth of 27 cities in the central area of Yangtze River Delta from 2006 to 2016. The estimation results show that:(i) The development of clean energy has reduced regional haze pollution and the level of economic development significantly; (ii) During the study period of this paper, haze pollution has significantly increased the consumption of clean energy, but it has hindered the level of economic development seriously. (iii) The level of economic development has increased clean energy consumption at a 1% level of significance, while also exacerbated the degree of haze pollution. Moreover, as a core variable of this paper, coal consumption has restrained clean energy development and played a positive role in accelerating economic development and haze pollution reduction.
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Investigating spatial variability of CO2 emissions in heavy industry: Evidence from a geographically weighted regression model
Article
  • Nov 2020
  • ENERG POLICY
China is now the world's largest carbon dioxide (CO2) emitter, and the government is under tremendous pressure to reduce CO2 emissions. The heavy industry sector is the largest contributor to the growth of CO2 emissions. Investigating the driving factors of this industry's CO2 emissions has important practical value. This paper applies the geographically weighted regression model to survey this industry's CO2 emissions. Empirical results show that urbanization exerts a heterogeneous impact on CO2 emissions across provinces and regions. This is mainly due to the differences in urban real estate and transportation infrastructure investments. Economic growth drives CO2 emissions, and this effect varies significantly by region and province on account of the differences in fixed-asset investment. It is more reasonable for local governments to develop emerging economies based on their specific conditions. Energy efficiency has the highest impact on CO2 emissions in the eastern region, because of the differences in R&D personnel investment and the number of patents granted. The energy consumption structure has the largest impact on CO2 emissions in the eastern region since it consumes more coal. Environmental regulations have a greater impact on CO2 emissions in the western region due to the differences in investment for industrial pollution control.
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