The air quality and health impacts of aviation in Asia

Abstract

Aviation in Asia is growing more rapidly than other regions around the world. Adverse health impacts of aviation are linked to an increase in the concentration of particulate matter smaller than 2.5 [mu]m in diameter (PM2.5). This thesis aims to quantify the regional-scale health impacts of aviation in Asia by modeling the air quality in Asia and applying Concentration-Response Functions (CRFs) to the aviation-attributable PM2.5 perturbations. In order to quantify the perturbation to the ambient air quality due to aviation emissions, the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model---a regional-scale chemical transport model--utilized after its performance is evaluated in predicting ambient PM2.5 concentrations. Aviation emissions for 2006 are from the Aviation Environmental Design Tool (AEDT), and background emissions for 2006 are generated using a combination of four Asian and global emissions inventories. A domain average increase of approximately 15ng/m3 in annual PM2.5 is observed due to full flight aviation emissions, while Landing and Takeoff (LTO) cycle emissions account for an increase of approximately 0.75ng/m3. Calculations using two different CRFs used by the EPA and the WHO estimate the following amount of aviation-attributable premature mortalities in Asia: 9400 (using the EPA CRF) or 6400 (using the WHO CRF) in the full flight scenario, and 550 or 390 in the LTO cycle scenario. Finally, comparisons to the global-scale model simulation results show consistent spatial patterns of air quality perturbations, while the regional-scale model estimates approximately 1.4 times the number of mortalities obtained from corresponding global-scale studies.