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Low-smoke fuels for residential heating linked to an increase in ultrafine particle emissions

Nature Geoscience volume 19, pages 447–454 (2026) Cite this article

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Abstract

Despite national variations, current air quality standards worldwide focus on reducing mass concentrations of atmospheric particulate matter to lower public health risks. However, these standards fall short in addressing the adverse health effects associated with ultrafine particles, which can penetrate deeper into the human lungs and even pass the blood–brain barrier. Here we present experimental, model and field data in addition to a lung deposition analysis to show there is a rise in ultrafine particle resulting from the transition to ‘low-smoke’ fuels in the residential sector. These low-smoke fuels, designed to lower particulate mass emissions, have unexpectedly led to a two-to-threefold increase in the emissions of ultrafine particle numbers, resulting in a higher contribution to lung deposition particles than all their smoky counterparts combined. Current air quality models underestimate ultrafine particles by a factor of ten, suggesting an underestimation of the health impacts when only particle mass was considered. These ultrafine particle events contrast sharply with the haze events that typically involve larger accumulation mode particles. Our findings highlight the urgent need to revise air quality standards to include ultrafine particles, ensuring air quality management strategies reduce mass concentration without the cost of increasing ultrafine particle number.

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Fig. 1: Emission profiles of solid fuel combustion.
The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.
Fig. 2: Source apportionment of lung and alveolar deposition particles.
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Fig. 3: Particle mass exceedance versus particle deposition.
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Fig. 4: Modelled versus measured particle mass and number concentration.
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Data availability

The data that support the findings are available via Zenodo at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14866078 (ref. 62). These data are also available from the corresponding author on request. Source data are provided with this paper.

Code availability

The CMAQ code is available via GitHub at https://github.com/USEPA/CMAQ (last access: 1 January 2026).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under grant nos. 42525301, 42430708, 42277092 and 42107126, the EPA-Ireland (AEROSOURCE, grant no. 2016-CCRP-MS-31) and the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment, Taighde Éireann—Research Ireland under grant no. 22/FFP-A/10611, International Partnership Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. 175GJHZ2022039FN), the Key Research Program of Frontier Sciences from the Chinese Academy of Sciences (grant no. ZDBS-LY-DQC001), the Shaanxi Innovation Team for Science and Technology (2024RS-CXTD-40), the New Cornerstone Science Foundation through the XPLORER PRIZE, the Hong Kong PolyU Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship (grant no. P0039190) and the Shaanxi Innovation Capability Support Plan—Youth Science and Technology Star Project (grant no. 2024ZC-KJXX-055). We thank J. Zhao (University of Helsinki, Finland) and Y. Li (University College Dublin, Ireland) for their assistance with the combustion experiments. We are also grateful to Thermo Fisher Scientific for the demo gas chromatograph–Orbitrap mass spectrometer system.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Loess Sciences, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi’an, China

    Chunshui Lin, Yi Liu, Wei Yuan, Haitao Cui & Ru-Jin Huang

  2. School of Natural Sciences, Physics, Ryan Institute’s Centre for Climate and Air Pollution Studies, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland

    Chunshui Lin, Darius Ceburnis, Lu Lei, Shan Wang, Kirsten N. Fossum, Colin O’Dowd & Jurgita Ovadnevaite

  3. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

    Chunshui Lin & Tao Wang

  4. Department of Biosciences, Nord University, Steinkjer, Norway

    Anna Trubetskaya

  5. School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

    William Smith

  6. Arigna Fuels, Arigna Carrick-on-Shannon Co., Roscommon, Ireland

    Robert Johnson

  7. Bernal Institute, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Vasily Lebedev

  8. LCP-A2MC, Université de Lorraine, Metz, France

    Vincent Carré

  9. School of Engineering and Ryan Institute, University of Galway, Galway, Ireland

    Rory F. D. Monaghan

  10. MaREI, the SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine, Galway, Ireland

    Rory F. D. Monaghan

  11. Aerodyne Research Inc., Billerica, MA, USA

    Douglas Worsnop

  12. International Laboratory for Air Quality and Health, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

    Lidia Morawska

  13. Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China

    Ru-Jin Huang

  14. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Ru-Jin Huang

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  1. Chunshui Lin
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Contributions

C.L.: conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, methodology, project administration, visualization, writing—original draft and writing—review and editing. D.C.: data curation, investigation and formal analysis. A.T.: data curation, investigation, formal analysis and methodology. L.L.: data curation and investigation. S.W.: data curation and investigation. Y.L.: data curation and investigation. W.Y.: data curation and investigation. H.C.: data curation and investigation. W.S.: methodology, project administration and validation; R.J.: methodology, project administration and validation. K.N.F.: data curation and investigation. V.L.: data curation and investigation. V.C.: data curation and investigation; R.F.D.M.: writing—review and project administration. D.W.: writing—review. L.M.: writing—review. T.W.: writing—review and project administration. R.-J.H.: conceptualization, data curation, investigation, project administration and writing—review and editing. C.O’D.: conceptualization, project administration and writing—review and editing. J.O.: conceptualization, project administration and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Ru-Jin Huang, Colin O’Dowd or Jurgita Ovadnevaite.

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Nature Geoscience thanks Joakim Pagels and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. Primary Handling Editors: Carolina Ortiz Guerrero and Tom Richardson, in collaboration with the Nature Geoscience team.

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Supplementary discussion, Figs. 1–18, Tables 1–13 and references.

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Fig. 1: emission data. Fig. 2a–c: SMPS field sampling and source apportionment PMF data. Fig. 3: exceedance days, time series of number concentration with raw temporal records and estimated particle deposition. Fig. 4: time series (raw temporal records) and CMAQ simulation results.

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Lin, C., Ceburnis, D., Trubetskaya, A. et al. Low-smoke fuels for residential heating linked to an increase in ultrafine particle emissions. Nat. Geosci. 19, 447–454 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-026-01942-1

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