Impact of Clean Air Policy on Criteria Air Pollutants and Health Risks Across China During 2013–2021

Abstract The impact of clean air policy enacted in China since 2013 on air quality and human health remained poorly understood. For the first time, we developed a full‐coverage air quality data set including six criteria air pollutants (PM 2.5 , PM 10 , NO 2 , SO 2 , CO, and 8‐hr O 3 ) using a three‐stage model. Then, the LightGBM model was applied to further quantify the respective contributions of emission and meteorology to air quality. The results suggested that the deweathered concentrations of PM 2.5 , PM 10 , NO 2 , SO 2 , and CO in China decreased by 46.2%, 43.1%, 24.7%, 55.5%, and 37.2%, respectively. However, the 8‐hr O 3 concentration in China increased by 19.4%. The variation trends of deweathered PM 2.5 and NO 2 were much weaker than the absolute concentrations of these species, indicating more strict emission control measures should be imposed in the future. Based on the comparison of the effectiveness during 2013–2017 and 2018–2021, we found that nearly all of the regions suffered from immense difficulty in reducing PM 2.5 emissions in recent years. However, the CO emission control has become more efficient since 2018. The increasing rate of deweathered 8‐hr O 3 concentration was more dramatic during 2018–2021 compared with 2013–2017, which was in contrast to the absolute 8‐hr O 3 concentration. It suggested that the rapid increase of ambient O 3 level might be masked by favorable meteorological conditions since 2018. Although the large reduction of PM 2.5 and NO 2 saved more health benefits (625,362 cases), the increase of O 3 exposure aggravated the health costs (20,419 cases) across China. Therefore, collaborative control of PM 2.5 , NO 2 , and O 3 pollution are still imperative in the future work.