Air quality and public health risk assessment: A case study in a typical polluted city, North China

Abstract To evaluate air quality changes along with public health in Jinan, a typical polluted city of North China, spatial and temporal features of six criteria pollutants and relative health risk were conducted from 2013 to 2017. In general, the concentrations of criteria air pollutants except ozone had obviously decreased. For spatial pattern, the air qualities in north Jinan were influenced by dust, vehicle and industry emission. Health risk evaluation showed people mainly suffered health risk from PM10 and PM2.5. However, O3 had become another noticeable pollutant in recent years. Compared with other cities in China, the citizens in Jinan were more likely to suffer from much higher health risk categories than the current Air Quality Index (AQI) approach, particularly in winter. During severe polluted episodes, secondary formation via heterogeneous reaction would increase public health risk from air pollution. Back trajectories and potential source contribution function (PSCF) analysis identified anthropogenic sources from near provinces particularly to the east and south may aggravate air pollution by air mass transport. In general, the emission controls on VOCs, NO2 and regional joint pollution prevention would be essential to reduce urban air pollution in the next phases.