ANALYSIS OF AMBIENT PARTICULATE AIR POLLUTION AND HEALTH IN NEPAL |Journal of Global Ecology

Nepal's air quality has long been a source of environmental and public health concern. Air pollution monitoring is currently taking place at 28 monitoring stations across Nepal's 19 provinces and districts. For around two and a half years, from 2019 to May 2021, available daily air pollution data (PM2.5) was collected for 21 stations across 6 provinces (excluding Sudorpaschim) and 14 districts. Similarly, for the districts where air pollution data was available, yearly outpatient respiratory and cardiovascular disease morbidity was derived for the years 2018/19-2019/20. To examine Nepal's air pollution situation and categorization characteristics, descriptive and discriminant analysis were used. Overall, the yearly average of PM2.5 in Nepal declined from 37.8 g/m3 in 2019 to 35.8 g/m3 in 2020, but suddenly and significantly increased to 56.5 g/m3 in 2021 (Till May), mostly owing to large-scale forest fires that occurred in various parts of Nepal and peaked around the end of March 2021. Province 2 had the most polluted air (58.9 g/m3), while Karnali had the least contaminated air (30.5 g/m3), implying that the averages were 3.5 to 5.9 times higher than the WHO yearly recommendation of 10 g/m3 for PM2.5. Province 2 (0.54) has the greatest discriminant coefficient (0.54), followed by Province 1 (0.13), Bagmati (0.02), Lumbini (-0.18), Gandaki (-0.20), and Karnali (-0.20). (-0.25). Pneumonia (0.108) had the highest attributable factor related with PM2.5, followed by COPD (0.053) and respiratory disease (0.033). Respiratory morbidities have the biggest annual attributable burden (1.66 lakhs), followed by Pneumonia (0.35 lakhs), and COPD (0.2 lakhs). To summarise, Nepal's air quality is a major environmental and public health concern that will require additional steps and efforts to address in the future years.

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