A Review on PM_2.5 Sources, Mass Prediction, and Association Analysis: Research Opportunities and Challenges

Air pollution has long been one of the most life-threatening issues which has led to massive amounts of premature human death due to fatal diseases and environmental disasters. Several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set up by the United Nations coincide with the solutions for air pollution reduction. To reach a sustainable future, researchers have conducted many theoretical analyses or case studies of air pollution at different places on the globe and proposed prudent strategies for obtaining an equilibrium between socioeconomic development and air pollution reduction. This research selected a substantial number of articles and existing review papers published between 2013 and 2024 and organized these publications into subfields. This research was focused on filling the gap between existing reviews and the state-of-the-art technologies in the last decade. To be informative and contextual, this review presented a pathway for readers to comprehend the research in three contiguous phases of air pollution analysis, from compositional apportionment and mass prediction of pollution to disclosing associations between pollution concentration and natural or anthropogenic factors. At the end of this review, the author highlighted several research fields which have been overlooked in previous reviews but will be increasingly important in the future.