Tracking short-term health impacts attributed to ambient PM(2.5) and ozone pollution in Chinese cities: an assessment integrates daily population

Joint and synergistic control of PM(2.5) and ozone pollution is an urgent need in China and a global-widely concerned issue. Health impact assessment could provide a comprehensive perspective for PM(2.5)-ozone coordinated control strategies. For a detailed understanding of the seasonality and regionality of the health impacts attributed to PM(2.5) and ozone in China, this study extended the classic health impact function by daily population and assessed the short-term (daily) health impacts in 335 Chinese cities in 2021. Population migration indexes from Baidu were introduced to estimate the cities’ daily population. Using this method, we quantitatively investigated the influence of population on short-term health impact assessment and identified which was significant in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region and other populous cities. Although the annual sums of PM(2.5)- and ozone-related daily health impacts were close for all Chinese cities, the PM(2.5)-related health impact was equivalent to 333.96% and 32.07% of that ozone-related, during the cold and warm periods. The correlation and local spatial association analysis found significant city-specific and city-cluster associations of daily health impacts during the warm period and in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei and surrounding regions (BTHS) and the Yangtze River Delta (YRD). Policymakers could promote period- and pollutant-targeted control actions for the major city groups, especially the BTHS, YRD, and PRD. Our methods and findings investigated the various influences of the population on short-term health impact assessment and proposed the PM(2.5)-ozone collaborative control idea for key regions and city groups. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11356-022-22067-z.