Biosciences, Faculty of Life and Health Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
Ex - Cheshire and Merseyside Public Health England Centre, Liverpool, UK.
Sci Rep. 2023 Jun 2;13(1):8964. doi: 10.1038/s41598-023-35679-3.
Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) causes 3.7 million annual deaths worldwide and potentially damages every organ in the body. The cancer-causing potential of fine particulates (PM) highlights the inextricable link between air quality and human health. With over half of the world's population living in cities, PM emissions are a major concern, however, our understanding of exposure to urban PM is restricted to relatively recent (post-1990) air quality monitoring programmes. To investigate how the composition and toxicity of PM has varied within an urban region, over timescales encompassing changing patterns of industrialisation and urbanisation, we reconstructed air pollution records spanning 200 years from the sediments of urban ponds in Merseyside (NW England), a heartland of urbanisation since the Industrial Revolution. These archives of urban environmental change across the region demonstrate a key shift in PM emissions from coarse carbonaceous 'soot' that peaked during the mid-twentieth century, to finer combustion-derived PM post-1980, mirroring changes in urban infrastructure. The evolution of urban pollution to a recent enhanced PM signal has important implications for understanding lifetime pollution exposures for urban populations over generational timescales.
大气颗粒物（PM）在全球范围内导致 370 万人每年死亡，并可能损害体内的每个器官。细颗粒物（PM）的致癌潜力突出了空气质量与人类健康之间不可分割的联系。由于世界上超过一半的人口居住在城市，PM 排放是一个主要关注点，然而，我们对城市 PM 暴露的了解仅限于相对较近的（1990 年后）空气质量监测计划。为了研究 PM 的组成和毒性在城市地区随时间的变化，我们重建了来自默西塞德郡（英格兰西北部）城市池塘沉积物的空气污染记录，这些记录跨越了 200 年，默西塞德郡是自工业革命以来城市化的中心。该地区的这些城市环境变化档案表明，PM 排放从 20 世纪中期达到峰值的粗碳质“煤烟”向 1980 年后更细的燃烧衍生 PM 转变，反映了城市基础设施的变化。城市污染向最近增强的 PM 信号的演变，对于理解城市人口在几代人的时间尺度上的终生污染暴露具有重要意义。
