Rapid urbanization ‘has health benefits’
Print Edition
RAPID urbanization in China is not contributing to air pollution, but may have brought health benefits for the hundreds of millions of people who moved to cities, preventing an estimated 450,000 premature deaths over the past three decades, according to a new study.
That’s because after migrating to the city, many Chinese switched from crop residue, firewood and low-quality coal to cleaner fuel types such as electricity and gas, which considerably lessened regional emissions and cut their exposure to harmful PM2.5 particles, according to the study published by the US journal Science Advances.
“In the past, it was generally thought that population migration into cities would lead to the accumulation of pollutants and the affected persons in a small space, increasing the exposure in regional, high-density population areas, thereby raising health risks,” professor Shu Tao at Peking University, who led the study, told reporters.
“This understanding ignores the positive impact of energy structure changes on health,” Tao said.
For the study, Tao’s team investigated the influence of rural to urban migration on pollutant emissions since 1980, when urbanization began to accelerate following the initiation of reform and opening-up.
The researchers were able to track migration using China’s hukou registration system, and adjusted for migrants living in cities who are unregistered.
They found that as a result of increased migration, the reduction in national average PM2.5 exposure concentration in 2010 corresponded to an annual reduction of 36,000 premature deaths.
Overall, 450,000 premature deaths were avoided between 1980 and 2010, indicating “a health benefit from the three decades of migration,” the study said.
Despite the net benefit on a national level, pollution levels associated with migration are still on the rise in large cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, which are experiencing massive immigration that increases local emissions, it noted.
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