Bibliometric analysis of global research on air pollution and human health: 1998–2017

To give a basic overview of research publications on air pollution and human health, a bibliometric analysis of 2179 documents published during the last two decades (year 1998 to 2017) was carried out. The relevant data was retrieved from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) and analyzed by using the software such as VOSviewer 1.6.7, Tableau Public 2018.1, and Origin Pro 9.0 for visualization and mapping. The publication trend showed a drastic increase during the second decade. The most productive countries working in the field of air pollution and human health were the USA, China, Italy, England, and Canada, whereas top institutions were Chinese Academy of Sciences, US EPA, Harvard University, Peking University, and University of Sao Paulo. Likewise, leading authors in the context of number of documents published and co-citation were Michael Bell and C. Arden Pope respectively. Majority of the researches were published in the journals like Atmospheric Environment, Science of the Total Environment, and Environmental Science and Pollution Research whereas most common author keywords in the publications were “air pollution,” “particulate matter,” and “PM2.5.”