The study evaluated 88 clean-heating pilot cities in northern China between 2013 and 2023, comparing weather-adjusted daily PM2.5 against modelled cities without the policy. Heating-season PM2.5 fell by 3.01 micrograms per cubic metre on average, and by 5.96 on the most polluted days. Applying an exposure-response model to the cleaner days gave an estimated 12,454 fewer deaths, more than half of them in a tenth of the cities.
Why it is interesting: The average fall understates the policy, as a quarter of improved days carried nearly half the modelled benefit.
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