ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Environmental Health and Exposome
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1682574
This article is part of the Research TopicClimate Change, Air Pollution, and Health Inequality: Vulnerability of Marginalized PopulationsView all 29 articles
The Global Burden, Trends and Cross-Region Inequities of Non-Communicable Diseases Attributed to Ambient Particulate Matter Pollution
Provisionally accepted
Xue Li1
Hanpeng Lai2*- 1Jianhu Clinical Medical College of Yangzhou University, Yancheng, China
- 2Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, China
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Background Ambient particulate matter poses long-term and geographically uneven health risks, warranting assessment of global burden and regional disparities. Methods GBD 2019 data was used to assess age standardized rates of mortality (ASMR) and DALY (ASDR) from five chronic diseases due to ambient particulate matter from 1990-2019, focusing on temporal trends and cross-regional disparities using the Socio-demographic Index (SDI). Results In 2019, ischemic heart disease (IHD) and stroke accounted for the greatest burdens attributable to ambient particulate matter, with global ASMRs of 30 and 26 per 100,000, respectively, followed by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) at 16, tracheal bronchus and lung (TBL) cancer at 6.8, and diabetes mellitus at 4.5. From 1990-2019, COPD showed a marked decline with an AAPC on ASMR of -0.47, while diabetes and TBL cancer rose sharply, with AAPCs of 1.57 and 0.75, respectively. ASDR for the five disease had similar patterns. Southeast Asia, East Asia, and Oceania carried the heaviest TBL cancer and stroke burden from 2000 on, North Africa and the Middle East ranked consistently highest for IHD and diabetes mellitus, and South Asia emerged as the global hotspot for COPD after 2005. TBL cancer was concentrated in higher-SDI regions, whereas COPD and diabetes mellitus rose disproportionately in lower-SDI areas. Population growth and aging were the primary drivers of increases across all diseases. Health inequality analysis further showed a general shift of burdens from high-to low-SDI countries, with indices declining from high positive values to lower or even negative values between 1990 and 2019. Conclusion Ambient particulate matter continues to drive unequal disease burdens, especially in low-and middle-SDI regions, and more targeted efforts are thus needed.
Keywords: Global burden of disease, Ambient particulate matter pollution, non-communicable disease, cross-region inequities, Age-standardized rate
Received: 09 Aug 2025; Accepted: 13 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li and Lai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Hanpeng Lai, alfred_lai@yzu.edu.cn
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