Air Pollution and Environmental Inequality in Urban China: Evidence from Beijing

Abstract

While Beijing is not alone when it comes to smoke-filled skies (CNN, 2013), this city of more than 20 million people has come to symbolize the environmental cost of China's break-neck economic growth. As China continues a three decade-long trajectory of economic growth and urban development, there has been increasing concerns on the environment risk and public health in urban China. Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) pollution has been a heated topic for discussion that also leads to health concerns greatly, such as respiratory problems and cardiovascular diseases. Pollution exacerbates socioeconomic inequality as it causes greater suffering amongst the poor. They are more exposed and often unable to pay to prevent or to treat the resulting health consequences. International literature on environmental inequality and air pollution indicates that most studies were conducted in developed countries, mostly in North America and Europe. Overall, most North American studies have shown that areas where low-socioeconomic-status communities dwell experience higher concentrations of criteria air pollutants, while European research has been mixed (Hajat et al., 2015). Research from other parts of the world, especially developing countries is rather limited, though it has shown a general trend similar to that of North America. One of the few papers to highlight inequality in the distribution of criteria air pollutants in an Asian setting was in Hong Kong (Fan et al., 2012). It suggests that both residential mobility and market forces may influence air pollution exposure and shows how government housing policy can influence air pollution exposure. Therefore, our study aims to fill in the research gap in the Chinese context by examine whether PM2.5-induced health burdens differ significantly among different socio-economic groups in Urban China, hence leading to a potential case of health-related social injustice. We plan to evaluate the socioeconomic disparities related to PM2.5 exposures at both neighborhood and individual level in Beijing. The PM2.5 exposure assessment will be conducted by integrating Satellite-based remote sensing data and ground monitoring data from 35 stations in Beijing. We develop a spatiotemporal statistical model to estimate the fine-grained (1km*1km) daily ground-level PM2.5 concentrations in Beijing for year 2014 and 2015. At the neighbourhood level, we will develop the socioeconomic-status indicators based on the Chinese census 2010 data. Given the fact that income level is not available in the census data, we plan to develop several other indicators by using data from location-based social media, housing transactions to approximate it. At the individual level, we have already collected 300 individual surveys which include the individual socio-economic attributes, GPS-based activity-travel diary data and associated hourly PM2.5 concentration data in a subarea in Beijing. Hence, we can assess individuals‘ pollution exposure under different travel-activity modes and measure the variations among different groups by travel-activity pattern and socioeconomic attributes. Finally, an integrated regression model will be estimated to evaluate the role of both individual- and neighborhood-level socio-economic status metrics in their specific populations. References: . Sarkar, C, Webster, CJ, Gallacher, J. Healthy cities: Public health through urban planning. UK: Edward Elgar. 2014 . Hajat, A.; Hsia, C.; O’Neill, M. Socioeconomic Disparities and Air Pollution Exposure: a Global Review. Curr. Envir. Health Rpt. 2015, 2 (4), 440-450. . Harper S, Ruder E, Roman HA, et al. Using inequality measures to incorporate environmental justice into regulatory analyses. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2013;10:4039–59. . HajatA,Diez-RouxAV,AdarSD,etal.Airpollutionandindividual and neighborhood socioeconomic status: evidence from the Multi- Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis (MESA). Environ Health Perspect. 2013;121:1325–33. . Wong, C. M., Ou, C. Q., Chan, K. P., Chau, Y. K., Thach, T. Q., Yang, L., . . . Lam, T. H. (2008). The effects of air pollution on mortality in socially deprived urban areas in Hong Kong, China. Environmental Health Perspectives, 116(9), 1189-1194.