China’s air quality improvements benefit public health
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Researchers in China assessed the health benefits resulting from improved air quality and found the country is on track to meet a global goal of reducing health impacts from air pollution.
A team from the Asian Clean Air Center and Peking University studied data from 2015 to 2021 and determined that China is one of the developing nations most likely to achieve the World Health Organization’s (WHO) target of halving health impacts related to air pollution by 2040.
During this period, China’s exposure to PM2.5, a dangerous particulate matter, decreased disease burden by approximately 19 percent, a rate exceeding the global average and that of several other countries with high PM2.5 exposure. From 2013 to 2025, the nation’s weighted average PM2.5 concentration fell from 64.4 to 27.4 micrograms per cubic meter, a 57.4 percent reduction. This improvement correlated with a 27.2 percent decrease in health risks linked to long-term PM2.5 exposure in adults.
Researchers noted that fully meeting the new, more stringent national air quality standards would bring China even closer to the WHO goal. If pollution exposure could be entirely avoided based on the new standards, the nation’s health risks from PM2.5 exposure would fall by 44.1 percent compared to 2015 levels, representing 88 percent of the WHO’s target.
The study also found that continued decreases in PM2.5 levels, maintaining the same rate of decline, would allow China to meet the WHO goal when the national average concentration reaches 23.7 micrograms per cubic meter.
