Su Wenjing, Hu Qihou, Chen Yujia, Lin Jinan, Zhang Chengxin, Liu Cheng
Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China.
Key Lab of Environmental Optics & Technology, Anhui Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China.
Environ Int. 2022 Dec;170:107600. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2022.107600. Epub 2022 Oct 25.
Formaldehyde (HCHO) is a toxic and hazardous air pollutant that widely exists in atmosphere. Insufficient spatial and temporal coverage of surface HCHO measurements is limiting studies on surface HCHO-related air quality management and health risk assessment. This study develops a method to derive global ground-level HCHO concentrations from satellite-based tropospheric HCHO columns using TM5-simulated surface-to-column conversion factor with coarse spatial resolution. The method improves the factor more representative in finer grids by constraining TM5-simulated vertical profile shapes with satellite HCHO columns. The surface HCHO concentrations derived by the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) show good correlation with in situ HCHO measurements (R = 0.59) from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency surface network. We investigated how surface HCHO relates to urbanization and population aggregation over seven regions with high HCHO pollution. The results show urban HCHO increases as a power function with population size in China, India, and West Asia. HCHO concentrations in rural aeras also present strong log-log relationship with population aggregation in China, India, the United States, and Europe. Moreover, OMPS-derived ground-level HCHO concentrations were used to estimate global cancer burden caused by long-term outdoor HCHO exposure. The results show that up to 418188 more people worldwide will develop this cancer during the human life cycle. The global cancer burden is mainly from the South-East Asia region (33.11 %) and the Western Pacific region (22.95 %). This cancer occurrence in India and China is ranked 1st and 2nd in the world due to the large population size and serious HCHO pollution. Besides, global surface HCHO concentrations and cancer burden derived from the Environmental Trace Gases Monitoring Instrument which is China's first hyperspectral space-based spectrometer are found similar patterns with that from OMPS. Our results provide new insight into the impact of population urbanization on HCHO pollution and global outdoor HCHO-caused health risks.
甲醛（HCHO）是一种有毒有害的空气污染物，广泛存在于大气中。地面HCHO测量在时空覆盖范围上的不足，限制了与地面HCHO相关的空气质量管控及健康风险评估研究。本研究开发了一种方法，利用具有粗空间分辨率的TM5模拟的地表到柱面转换因子，从基于卫星的对流层HCHO柱中推导全球地面HCHO浓度。该方法通过用卫星HCHO柱约束TM5模拟的垂直廓线形状，改进了在更精细网格中更具代表性的因子。由臭氧绘图和剖面仪套件（OMPS）推导的地表HCHO浓度，与美国环境保护局地面网络的现场HCHO测量值显示出良好的相关性（R = 0.59）。我们研究了在七个HCHO污染严重的地区，地表HCHO与城市化和人口聚集之间的关系。结果表明，在中国、印度和西亚，城市HCHO随人口规模呈幂函数增加。在中国、印度、美国和欧洲，农村地区的HCHO浓度与人口聚集也呈现出很强的对数-对数关系。此外，利用OMPS推导的地面HCHO浓度来估算长期室外HCHO暴露导致的全球癌症负担。结果表明，在人类生命周期内，全球将有多达418188人患上这种癌症。全球癌症负担主要来自东南亚地区（33.11%）和西太平洋地区（22.95%）。由于人口规模大且HCHO污染严重，印度和中国的这种癌症发病率在世界上分别排名第一和第二。此外，发现中国首个基于太空的高光谱光谱仪环境微量气体监测仪推导的全球地表HCHO浓度和癌症负担与OMPS的结果具有相似模式。我们的研究结果为人口城市化对HCHO污染和全球室外HCHO所致健康风险的影响提供了新的见解。
