PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2017, Vol. 36 ›› Issue (10): 1260-1269.doi: 10.18306/dlkxjz.2017.10.008

• Special Issue: Health Geography and Human Settlement • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Progress of research on the health impact of people's space-time behavior and environmental pollution exposure

Jing MA1(), Yanwei CHAI2, Tingting FU2   

  1. 1. School of Geography, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China
    2. College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
  • Online:2017-10-28 Published:2017-10-28
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.41601148, No.41529101

Abstract:

Environmental pollution is a major problem worldwide, subjecting people to serious health risks. Numerous studies on environmental pollution and health impact have been conducted, focusing on various aspects such as the associations between environmental pollution and health at the aggregate level, air pollution exposure and health effects based on daily travel behavior of residents, and environmental justice and health inequality. The environmental justice and health inequality research focuses on the adverse environmental impacts on the disadvantaged groups, such as the minority, children, people with low-level income, and migrants. This article aims to provide a comprehensive review on environmental pollution and health studies from various perspectives, and presents a diversified research framework to investigate the complexity between environmental pollution and health. Moreover, we propose that future research needs to link individual space-time behavior with environmental pollution and health, to explore the microscale or personal-level real-time air pollution exposure and its health effects based on the residents' space-time behavior trajectory. More research needs to be conducted to investigate the complex relationship between environmental justice and health inequality at microscale under different social and spatial contexts, in order to develop more just, effective urban/transportation planning measures and environmental health policies.

Key words: health, travel behavior, air pollution exposure, environmental justice, health inequality