PNNL

Abstract

Ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5) is the world’s leading environmental health risk factor. Reducing the PM2.5 disease burden requires specific strategies that target dominant sources across disaggregated sectors, fuels, and spatial scales. We provide the most globally-comprehensive and contemporary PM2.5 source characterization to-date, by combining novel emission scenarios with a global atmospheric chemistry-transport model to quantify PM2.5 mass contributions from 24 sectors and fuel types across 21 regions, 204 countries, and 200 sub-national areas. These contributions were combined with high-resolution PM2.5 exposure estimates and applied to disease-specific concentration-response functions to estimate the associated sector- and fuel-specific attributable mortality. Globally, coal combustion contributed 14.1%, with national-level contributions as large as 43.7% in Eswatini and up to 44.1% around Johannesburg, South Africa. Nearly 1.05 million deaths worldwide (27.3% of the total attributable to PM2.5) were avoidable by eliminating total fossil-fuel combustion, with an additional ~767,000 deaths (20%) attributable to solid biofuel use.