Health benefit assessment of continuous improvement of air quality action plan in China.

China’s 2023 Continuous Improvement of Air Quality Action Plan is projected to cut annual mean PM2.5 by 1.05, 0.3, and 0.18 μg/m³ while raising O3 by 3.08, 1.03, and 0.91 μg/m³ across three key regions during 2020–2025.

• Why it matters: Air quality policies can trade off benefits from PM2.5 against harms from ozone, but the health and economic consequences of such dual-pollutant shifts are not well quantified.
• What they did: The study used an air quality model with updated chemical mechanisms to compare pre- vs post-implementation concentrations, then applied the Global Exposure Mortality Model to estimate premature deaths and monetized effects via willingness-to-pay.
• The result: Across the three key regions, the plan is estimated to prevent about 5581 (95% CI: 4720–6378) premature deaths from PM2.5 reductions but add 3043 (95% CI: 1136–4547) deaths from O3 increases, yielding +1414.14 (95% CI: 1195.05–1617.21) million USD benefits and −993.33 (95% CI: 368.67–1492.98) million USD disbenefits.

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