Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Public Health, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana.
School of Medicine and Public Health, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.
J Rural Health. 2019 Sep;35(4):518-527. doi: 10.1111/jrh.12348. Epub 2019 Feb 11.
Rural areas may face under-recognized threats to air quality. We tested 2 hypotheses that 1) rural areas in New South Wales, Australia, would have better air quality than metropolitan Sydney, and that 2) the rural Upper Hunter region characterized by coal mining and coal combustion would have worse air quality than other rural areas of the state.
We analyzed 2017 daily mean values for New South Wales, Australia, for particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10), sulfur dioxide (SO ), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO ), and NOx (sum of NO and NO ). Forty-six air monitoring stations were grouped into 6 rural and urban regional areas. Linear regression models examined pollution levels in association with rural and urban regions and meteorological covariates.
Findings show that daily mean pollutant levels in the rural Upper Hunter were the highest of all regions, and were significantly higher than metropolitan Sydney, with and without control for weather conditions, for every pollutant. For example, daily mean PM2.5 was 8.64 µg/m in the rural Upper Hunter, compared to 7.23 µg/m in metropolitan Sydney.
Results highlight the need to consider both urban and rural sources of pollution in air quality studies, and appropriate policy steps to address likely rural air pollution from coal mining.
农村地区可能面临空气质量未被充分认识到的威胁。我们检验了以下 2 个假说：1）澳大利亚新南威尔士州的农村地区空气质量要好于悉尼大都市地区，以及 2）以采煤和煤炭燃烧为特征的农村上亨特地区的空气质量要比该州的其他农村地区差。
我们分析了澳大利亚新南威尔士州 2017 年每日平均的颗粒物（PM2.5 和 PM10）、二氧化硫（SO2）、一氧化氮（NO）、二氧化氮（NO2）和氮氧化物（NOx，即 NO 和 NO2 的总和）。46 个空气质量监测站被分为 6 个农村和城市区域。线性回归模型检验了与农村和城市区域以及气象协变量相关的污染水平。
研究结果表明，所有地区中，农村上亨特地区的每日平均污染物水平最高，且无论是否控制天气条件，其污染水平均显著高于悉尼大都市地区，每个污染物都是如此。例如，农村上亨特地区的 PM2.5 日均值为 8.64µg/m3，而悉尼大都市地区为 7.23µg/m3。
研究结果强调，在空气质量研究中需要同时考虑城市和农村地区的污染来源，并采取适当的政策措施来解决可能来自采煤的农村空气污染问题。
