Application of A Health Index Using PM2.5 Concentration Reductions for Evaluating Cross-administrative Region Air Quality Policies.

The primary goal of air quality policies is to reduce the impact of air pollution on human health, in particular, it is very important in the attainment-closing geographic areas with densely populated like Taiwan. Air quality policies in general only consider the reduction of emission as well as concentration, in order to highlight the effects of air pollution reduction responded on the human health, a health index using PM2.5 concentration reductions (HI-cr) was adopt to evaluate air quality policies in this study. To investigate priorities of cross-administrative region air quality policies, the HI-cr were calculated by using annual results of atmospheric modeling and air quality modeling, which involved the meteorological effect and spatial distribution of air pollution. By studying the emission reduction targets of three administrative regions, Taichung, Changhwa, and Nantau in the Central Taiwan, 8 reduction scenarios were designed and examined. It is found that HI-cr can present detail information in human health.To assess the adaptability of present air quality policy which considering equal amount of emission reduction, the result showed the region has the most concentration reduction but got lower HI-cr. Moreover, from the scenario examination, when increased emission reduction in the most population region, analysis results indicated even the concentration reduction is not the highest but HI-cr increased to be the highest among three regions. According to the analysis of different emission reduction policies, this study suggest HI-cr is an important index to evaluate the air pollution control policies instead of considering the impact of air pollutant concentrations only, especially in cross-administrative regions.