Burden of typical diseases attributed to the sources of PM2.5-bound toxic metals in Beijing: An integrated approach to source apportionment and QALYs
Open accessAbstract
-bound toxic metals (TMs) are derived from various sources, and they can cause many adverse health effects on the human body. To effectively reduce the disease burden of TMs by controlling the relative sources, an integrated approach of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) and source-apportionment (positive matrix factorization, PMF) was proposed and applied to some typical diseases induced by TMs in 2017 in Beijing. The estimation included two parts; first, the number of potentially affected people was calculated based on the source mass contribution from PMF and the inhalation unit risk of TMs; second, the QALYs lost per affected person was calculated based on the disease duration, expected years of life lost (EYLL) and quality of life (QoL) for both affected people and the general population. The results showed that QALYs lost per person for renal cancer (17.3 QALYs), pneumonia (14.4 QALYs), lung cancer (14.2 QALYs), skin cancer (12.7 QALYs) and diabetes mellitus (12.6 QALYs) were higher than those for other diseases. Combined with PMF, the source contributions to the overall burden of typical diseases from the TMs followed the order of coal combustion (50.2%) > vehicle emissions (24.4%) > fuel oil combustion (11.4%) > Cr-related industry (10.9%) > resuspended dust (3.0%). The rank was further compared with that assessed for noncancer and cancer risks, and we verified the reasonability of the QALYs method. For seasonal contributions to coal combustion, winter and spring had the highest contributions, which coincided with the fact that coal was the main fuel for heating in Beijing. The QALYs lost attributed to TMs for coal combustion decreased by 49.1% from 2016 to 2017, which may indicate an effective policy associated with coal control. Overall, the integrated approach was successfully employed for estimating the disease burden induced by TMs from each source and was an effective solution to identify the control rank of sources for TM reduction.
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Recent studies have provided growing evidence for the association between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and the risk of skin cancer, including melanoma.
“Recent studies have provided growing evidence for the association between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and the risk of skin cancer, including melanoma [74,75,76,77].”
From The Environmental Determinants of Skin Health: Linking Climate Change, Air Pollution, and the Dermatologic Disease Burden (2025) · cites this paper as [77]
The Abstract and §2.3 include skin cancer among the diseases assessed for burden from PM2.5-bound toxic metals in Beijing. They do not identify melanoma or report growing evidence of an association between PM2.5 generally and skin-cancer risk; the study estimates disease burden for a narrower exposure. (LLM, conf=0.87)
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Zieneldien, T., Ma, S., Tan, I. J., Kim, J., Busot, D., & Cohen, B. A. (2025) · International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health · doi:10.3390/ijerph22121820 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
“Recent studies have provided growing evidence for the association between fine particulate matter (PM 2.5 ) and the risk of skin cancer, including melanoma [74–77].”
Influential
- Authors
- Liu, J., Chen, Y., Cao, H., & Zhang, A.
- Affiliations
- Beijing Normal University (CN)
- Corresponding author
- Cao, Hongbin
- Venue
- Environment International
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2019-10
- Volume
- 131
- Pages
- 105041
- ISSN
- 0160-4120 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2964664244
- Cited by
- 36
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 1 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 10 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 7
- FWCI
- 2.16
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Environment International (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation (8192026)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis › Air Quality and Health Impacts
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Pollution › Heavy metals in environment
- Physical Sciences › Earth and Planetary Sciences › Atmospheric Science › Atmospheric chemistry and aerosols
- Keywords
- disease burden, quality-adjusted life years, source apportionment, positive matrix factorization, coal combustion, vehicle emissions, fuel oil combustion, respiratory cancer, lung cancer, kidney cancer, pneumonia, skin cancer, diabetes mellitus, seasonal variation, Beijing air pollution
- MeSH terms
- Beijing, Adolescent, Adult, Air Pollutants, Vehicle Emissions, Child, Child, Preschool, Coal, Disease, Dust, Environmental Monitoring, Humans, Infant, Infant, Newborn, Metals, Seasons, Quality-Adjusted Life Years, Particulate Matter, Young Adult
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