title: More than 500 million Chinese urban residents (14% of the global urban population) are imperiled by fine particulate hazard.
abstract: China's urbanization and the subsequent public vulnerability to degenerated environment is important to global public health. Among the environmental problems, fine particulate (PM2.5) pollution has become a serious hazard in rapidly urbanizing China. However, quantitative information remains inadequate. We thus collected PM2.5concentrations and population census records, to illustrate the spatial patterns and changes in the PM2.5hazard levels in China, and to quantify public vulnerability to the hazard during 2000-2010, following the air quality standards of World Health Organization. We found that 28% (2.72 million km2) of China's territory, including 78% of cities (154 cities) with a population of >1 million, was exposed to PM2.5hazard in 2010; a 15% increase (1.47 million km2) from 2000 to 2010. The hazards potentially impacted the health of 72% of the total population (942 million) in 2010, including 70% of the young (206 million) and 76% of the old (71 million). This was a significant increase from the 42% of total the population (279 million) exposed in 2000. Of the total urban residents, 76% (501 million) were affected in 2010. Along with PM2.5concentration increase, massive number of rural to urban migration also contributed greatly to China's urban public health vulnerability.
authors: Center for Human-Environment System Sustainability (CHESS), State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology (ESPRE), Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China. Electronic address: hcy@bnu.edu.cn.
authors: Chunyang
authors: C
authors: He
authors: State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100085, China. Electronic address: ljhan@rcees.ac.cn.
authors: Lijian
authors: L
authors: Han
authors: Department of Geosciences, Murray State University, Murray, KY 42071, USA. Electronic address: qzhang@murraystate.edu.
authors: Robin Q
authors: RQ
authors: Zhang
mesh_terms: D002681:China; D004777:Environment; D004787:Environmental Pollution; D063426:Human Migration; D006801:Humans; D052638:Particulate Matter / Q000633:toxicity*; D012424:Rural Population; D014505:Urban Population; D014507:Urbanization
chemical_list: D052638:Particulate Matter
keywords: Air pollution; Developing country; Environmental sustainability; Population migration