Spatially explicit analysis of production and consumption responsibility for the PM2.5-related health burden towards beautiful China.

Promoting good health and ensuring responsible production and consumption are essential components of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) established by of the United Nations, as well as the goals of beautiful China. While the health impacts of air pollution have garnered significant attention, there remains a paucity of studies comparing the disparities in responsibility arising from production versus consumption. This paper integrates the Weather Research and Forecasting - Comprehensive Air Quality Model with Extensions (WRF-CAMx) model, the multiregional input‒output (MRIO) model, and the global exposure mortality model (GEMM) to assess the extent of PM2.5-related premature deaths caused by production and consumption activities in 30 Chinese provinces. The findings reveal a spatial mismatch in health burdens between production and consumption. Considering pollutant emissions and their transfer only through the supply chain leads to the finding that the net outflow of emissions from producers is mainly located in most of the northern provinces of China. However, when atmospheric transport and health impacts are included, the producing provinces are mainly located in central China, while the consuming provinces are located in the southeastern coastal and remote western and northern regions. Additionally, the long-range impact of consumption provinces with respect to the health burden is more than twice as large as that of production provinces, and its potential impact on the health burden cannot be ignored. From a sectoral perspective, production emissions from the non-electricity industry and services sectors contribute to 60% of the health burden, while their consumption emissions contribute to over 80% of the health burden. Furthermore, consumption activities in the non-electricity industry and services sectors significantly influence production emissions in the transport, agriculture, and electricity sectors. The geographical separation of consumption and production regions facilitated by trade is a critical yet often overlooked aspect in current regional air quality planning in China. A more comprehensive analysis of life-cycle emissions driven by final consumption could yield greater reductions compared to direct production reductions.

Farmland phytoremediation in bibliometric analysis.

Phytoremediation is an environmentally friendly, economical, and sustainable technique for restoring farmland. It can remove heavy metals and organic pollutants from the soil through the implementation of hyperaccumulator plants. In recent years, it has garnered significant interest from academic and industrial sectors. This article screened 368 research papers from the Web of Science core collection database related to farmland phytoremediation and conducted a bibliometric analysis of the domain based on CiteSpace. The paper intuitively demonstrates the most influential countries, the most productive institutions, the most contributing groups of authors, and the primary sources of farmland phytoremediation research domain. The findings additionally indicate that the research hotspots include: (1) mechanisms and principles of phytoremediation, (2) the improvement of restoration efficiency, (3) the economic, ecological, and sustainable development of phytoremediation. The exploration of plants with potential to accumulate heavy metals and produce large amounts of biomass is the research frontier within the field of farmland phytoremediation. Additionally, this bibliometric analysis can help scholars willing to work in this research field by concisely understanding the overall research field and frontiers. With the continuous improvement of phytoremediation and its combination with other remediation technologies, the future of farmland remediation will have a promising prospect.

Health burden evaluation of industrial parks caused by PM2.5 pollution at city scale.

Industrial park is an important emission sector of PM2.5 pollution. Previous studies have provided valuable information on the impact of PM2.5 from industrial parks on human health, but relevant studies at city scale are limited. In this study, the health burden of industrial parks was evaluated based on PM2.5-related premature deaths and economic contributions. The premature deaths were calculated in terms of a novel research model by integrating the Bayesian maximum entropy (BME) model, weighted concentration-weighted trajectory (WCWT), and integrated exposure-response function (IER). Take Tianjin City for example, it was found that since the main diffusion direction of PM2.5 in Tianjin is from south to north, the industrial parks in the south of Tianjin and close to the central city with high population density have high health burden. These industrial parks need to be focused on or even relocated in the future. The research model can provide scientific basis for the health burden evaluation of industrial parks at city scale, so as to help local governments optimize the layout of industrial parks and formulate environmental responsibility management policies for industrial parks.

Tracing the sources of PM2.5-related health burden in China.

Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) poses a major environmental risk to human health. We estimated PM2.5-related premature deaths in 30 Chinese provinces in 2020 using an integrated exposure response model based on monitored concentrations and obtained regional and sectoral contributions based on the atmospheric transport of the atmospheric transport contribution matrix. From the perspective of regional- and sectoral-scale effects, the results revealed that 740,140 [95% confidence interval (CI):646,538-839,968] premature deaths were related to PM2.5 in 2020, mainly in East (30%), Central (18%), and North (15%) China. Manufacturing activity was found to be the major cause of PM2.5-related premature deaths, accounting for over 50% of the deaths. From the perspective of the interregional atmospheric transport effect, although local emissions were the major source of PM2.5-related premature deaths in all regions, non-local emissions contributed approximately 30%. The overall trend in the net atmospheric transport direction was from north to south. In particular, the Guangdong, Guangxi, and Hainan provinces of South China received contributions of more than 40% from non-local provinces, mainly from the East and Central China. Combined with economic data, the regions and sectors with the highest PM2.5-related premature deaths per unit output or consumption include the manufacturing and household sectors in North and Northeast China and transportation, agriculture, and electricity in Central China. Therefore, from the perspective of the above three impacts, although the potential impact of PM2.5 pollution on health in China has decreased with the decrease in PM2.5 concentration in the past decade owing to strict air pollution control, the central and northern parts of China are still the key areas requiring air pollution control. The health impacts of air pollution associated with the rapid development of China's manufacturing industry in the post-pandemic era cannot be ignored.

Worsening Carbon Inequality Embodied in Trade within China.

The mismatch between trade-embodied economic benefits and CO2 emissions causes carbon inequality, which is seldom analyzed from the intracountry level, especially across a long-term period. This study applied an environmentally extended multiregional input-output model to trace this mismatch and measure the carbon inequality quantitatively within China during 2007-2017. The results show that during the past decade, China's national carbon inequality was continuously worsening with carbon Gini coefficients rising regardless of production- (0.21-0.30) or consumption-based (0.12-0.18) accounting. The regional carbon inequality was deteriorating, where less developed provinces with 20% of total value-added emitted 32.9% of total CO2 emissions in 2007, while this figure rose to 42.6% in 2017. The eastern provinces (Jiangsu and Shanghai) had entered into net economic and carbon beneficiaries keeping high trade advantages, by contrast the northwest provinces (Ningxia and Xinjiang) were trapped in a lose-lose situation with trade benefits declining by 68%. The southwest provinces (Yunnan and Guangxi) shifted from being net carbon and value-added exporters to net importers, stepping into the earlier development mode of eastern provinces. This hidden and exacerbated carbon inequality calls for regional-specific measures to avoid the dilemma of economic development and CO2 mitigation, which also gives a good reminder for the rising economies, like India.

An overview study on management and implementation of WEEE in China.

Waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) which contains various valuable and harmful materials is an inevitable waste in modern society. In order to resolve the pollution problems associated with WEEE treatment, a WEEE management system has been established in China. The main role of importers and manufacturers of electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) is to pay the treatment fees to facilitate the WEEE recycling in China. The announced treatment and subsidy fee is given by set, not by the weight of WEEE. There is no lesser green treatment fee for the producers which can produce environmentally friendly EEE in China. Also, the recovery of refrigerants from the foaming agent of refrigerators is not required in China. In total, 45 million sets of recycled WEEE were certified in 2020, a year that contains the most updated data. Among them, 48%, 14%, 20%, 10% and 8% are for TV, refrigerator, washing machine, computer and air conditioners, respectively. The spatial analysis indicates that the WEEE recycling activities are mainly concentrated on the mid-east and east regions of China. It also can be concluded that the certified amount of each province has higher positive correlation with provincial population than provincial GDP per capita and green recovery rate. It also clearly notes that the amount of recycled air conditioner is the lowest for each province. Thus, more effort should be conducted to increase the recycling of scrapped air conditioner in China.

The nexus of water-energy-food in China's tourism industry.

The tourism industry contributes significantly to the growth of the global economy and is considered to be strongly associated with a large amounts of water and energy consumption. In this study, the tourism water footprint (TWF) and the tourism energy footprint (TEF) of 138 sectors were investigated to examine the water-energy-food (W-E-F) nexus in the Chinese tourism industry from 2012 to 2017 by developing the water- and energy-based environmentally extended input-output analysis with the tourism satellite account. This study revealed that the W-E-F supply groups consumed total 15,556 million m3 of water and 4,964 million tce of energy to support the Chinese tourism industry. The largest contributor to the total TWF is the indirect water use from the food supply group (65%), while the largest proportion of total TEF is contributed by the direct energy use from 11 tourism direct sectors (63%), most especially the air transport sector. A much larger growth of the tourism industry was observed in 2017 compared to that of 2012. The structure decomposition analysis revealed that the growth of the overall water and energy consumption of China tourism is mainly driven by the growth of the total tourism expenditure, i.e. the scale effect. It is the same case for the food supply group associated with the Chinese tourism industry. In contrast, the contribution of the changes to the tourism expenditure composition is relatively low. Furthermore, the growth in water and energy consumption can be offset effectively by reducing the water and energy use coefficient and adjusting the economic production structure of tourism and its associated food supply group. In sum, the food supply and air transport sectors play a crucial role in the water-energy-food nexus of the tourism industry. Therefore, in the future, focus should be placed on improving the water and energy use efficiency of these sectors as well as enhancing their production structures.