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  • articleFree Access

    Evaluation of Health Loss Caused by Haze Pollution in Beijing: Historical Changes and Current Situation

    Haze pollution’s harm to residents’ health has become a public topic arousing the national, social and public concerns. This paper, taking Beijing as an example, quantitatively evaluated the current situation and historical changes of health-related economic loss caused by haze pollution across Beijing’s districts, based on the data from 2009 to 2016 on air pollutant concentration, pathology and health statistics. The results show that health-related economic loss caused by haze pollution of Beijing in 2016 was about RMB 67.925 billion. The most severe health loss was seen in Chaoyang, Haidian and Fengtai districts, while less health loss was found in Yanqing, Mentougou and Huairou districts. This is mainly attributed to the differences in pollutants emission, local population and geographic location. Judging from the trend, the health loss caused by air pollution across Beijing saw a wavelike rise first, followed by a decrease year by year, from 2009 to 2016; but the loss in 2016 was at least 1.1 times that in 2009. The control over air pollution faces severe challenges. Therefore, it is urgently needed to address haze pollution in line with the local conditions of Beijing and take gradual steps to incorporate health loss caused by air pollution into the balance sheet accounting system of natural resources.

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    Economic Development and China’s Urban Haze Pollution: Based on Spatial Correlation Networks

    China’s urban haze pollution has manifested prominent regional characteristics and spatial interaction, and such spatial interaction has evolved into a spatial network-based structural form. By use of the 2014–2016 real-time monitoring data of 160 Chinese cities, the authors precisely identify the forms of spatial correlation networks, reveal their overall features and microscopic models, and then construct spatial network weights to conduct empirical tests on the relationship between haze pollution and economic development. Studies show that spatial correlation networks featuring compactness, connectivity and superposition have already come into being in China’s urban haze pollution. Cities within the spatial correlation networks of haze pollution are interconnected in a triangle model. In different spatial correlation networks, the Environmental Kuznets Curve of urban haze pollution shows different states. The spatial network of socio-economic correlation, rather than entirely natural correlation, is more suitable for the current situation of haze pollution, which is a forceful retort to the opinions of Reductionism and Natural Determinism. The conclusions indicate that to address China’s haze pollution, it is advisable to keep exploring and improving the inter-regional prevention and control mechanism within the framework of economic cooperation, step up the top-level design and public participation of haze governance, and further consolidate the achievements of Blue Sky Protection Campaign.