Category:Air Pollution
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- Air Quality ~90% of the 🌎’s population breathing polluted air
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Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year. Why Do We Accept That as Normal?
Via NY Times / 8 July 2022
Via London Review of Books / 2 December 2021
TW Thread / 'Ten Million a Year: David Wallace-Wells on polluted air'
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Fossil Fuel Air Pollution Linked To 1 In 5 Deaths Worldwide, New Harvard Study Finds
Eight, Nine, Ten Million
Findings of this research will likely amplify calls to rapidly transition off of oil, gas and coal for reasons beyond curbing climate change
Air pollution from burning fossil fuels caused 1 in 5 deaths worldwide in 2018, killing more than 8 million+ people, according to Harvard University research published (Feb. 2021) in the 'Environmental Research Journal'.
The finding, based on new models that use atmospheric chemistry, significantly increased the previous estimates for deaths linked to tiny particles of burned carbon that lodge in soft lung tissue and cause respiratory diseases, trigger asthma attacks, and cloud cities with smog.
A recent prior estimate from the world’s largest and most comprehensive study of global deaths, known as the 'Global Burden of Disease Study', reported the total lives lost to outdoor airborne particulate matter ― which includes not only fossil fuel pollution, but also dust, wildfire smoke and burning crop fields ― at 4.2 million per year.
The new Harvard research shows nearly double that total from fossil fuel pollution alone, with the highest concentrations of fossil fuel-related deaths in regions with some of the most populous cities, where combustion-engine automobiles, fuel-heated buildings and sprawling power plants abound. Those regions include eastern North America, Europe and Southeast Asia...
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Indoor air pollution can be deadly for babies
Air pollution particles in young brains linked to Alzheimer's damage
The Guardian / October 6, 2020
Global implications as 90% of people breathe dirty air
Tiny air pollution particles have been revealed in the brain stems of young people and are intimately associated with molecular damage linked to Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease
Nanoparticles... linked to neurodegenerative diseases... more studies needed to study neuropathology of the brain stem
Neurotoxicants... 'metal rich nanoparticles... matched the shape and chemical composition of particles produced by traffic, through combustion and braking friction'
See the Scientific Study at Environmental Research
Volume 191, December 2020
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The 'Greatest Risk'
"Clean air is a matter of life and death"
Coronavirus and Impacts on Air Pollution Levels
One City, One Among Many, COVID-19 Measures and Monitors
Coronavirus impact on air quality in China, Feb 2020
Millions of deaths every year due to Air Pollution
Demonstrating the poisonous air of five major cities...
Experience #pollutionpods -- the air we breathe
The Time is Now, Time to Raise Awareness of the Need for Air Quality and Health!
Talking of Toxic Air Pollution!
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The Great Challenge: Air Pollution Impacts on Health from Childhood to Old Age
Report: Toxic air will shorten children's lives by 20 months
Global air pollution crisis is taking its greatest toll on children in South Asia
93 percent of the world’s children breathe polluted air each day
Nearly 2 billion children – about 93 percent of the world’s children under the age of 15 – breathe toxic, putrid air that’s so polluted it puts their health and well-being at serious risk, according to a new report by the World Health Organization.
Many of the children die: The United Nations' World Health Organization (WHO) estimates 600,000 children died in 2016 from lower respiratory infections caused by dirty air.
“Polluted air is poisoning millions of children and ruining their lives,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO. “This is inexcusable. Every child should be able to breathe clean air so they can grow and fulfill their full potential.”
Air pollution can affect children's cognitive ability and can also trigger asthma as well as cancer. Children who have been exposed to high levels of air pollution may be at greater risk for chronic illnesses such as cardiovascular disease later in life...
Children's Health and Air Pollution Report
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Off-the-chart air pollution in Delhi
Devastating, debilitating, deadly
Delhi Disaster
• https://www.airvisual.com/air-quality-map?lat=28.6683&lng=77.1167&zoomLevel=10
The Delhi air quality index, or AQI, reached as high as 858 at some areas in New Delhi at 6.30 a.m. on Monday after breaching 1,000 over the weekend, according to website AirVisual, which monitors air pollution around the world. Readings above 300 are considered hazardous and anything below 50 is the safe level.
The level of carcinogenic pollutants, which increases risk of stroke, heart disease and lung cancer, in New Delhi’s air was almost six times the reading in Beijing, where air quality has seen a considerable improvement over the past years.
“A child born yesterday in Delhi would have smoked 40-50 cigarettes on the first day of his or her life,” said Arvind Kumar, a lung surgeon at the Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi and founder of the Lung Care Foundation. “A silent damage is occurring inside our body.”
India, home to 10 cities with the world’s worst air quality, has been struggling to contain this annual catastrophe that killed an estimated 1.24 million citizens in 2017...
• https://twitter.com/samrelph/status/1190899141708136450
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Harnessing Real Time Data to Combat Air Pollution
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/Category:Air_Quality
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Tracking Ozone-Smog in U.S. Cities
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Detecting pollution of shipping lanes and individual ships from space
For the first time ever, scientists using data from @CopernicusEU #Sentinel5P were able to detect nitrogen dioxide plumes from individual ships from space.
A past study estimated that shipping emissions are globally responsible for around 400 000 premature deaths from lung cancer and cardiovascular disease, and 14 million childhood asthma cases each year.
For this reason, during the past decade, efforts to develop international shipping emission regulations have been underway. Since January 2020, the maximum sulphur dioxide content of ship fuels was globally reduced to 0.5% (down from 3.5%) in an effort to reduce air pollution and to protect health and the environment. It is expected that the nitrogen dioxide emissions from shipping will also become restricted during the coming years.
Monitoring ships to comply with these regulations is still an unresolved issue. The open ocean covers vast areas, with limited or no capacity to perform local checks. This is where satellites, such as the Copernicus Sentinel-5P satellite, come in...
Claus Zehner, ESA’s Sentinel-5P Mission Manager, commented, “We think that these new results demonstrate exciting possibilities for the monitoring of ship emissions in support of environmental regulation from space. Future planned satellite missions with improved spatial resolution, for example the Copernicus Anthropogenic Carbon Dioxide Monitoring satellites, should allow for the better characterisation of nitrogen dioxide ship emission plumes and, possibly, detection of smaller ship plumes.”
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The State of Global Air
• https://www.stateofglobalair.org/
• https://www.stateofglobalair.org/air
• https://www.stateofglobalair.org/health
Country-by-Country (interactive metrics) -- https://www.stateofglobalair.org/data/#/air/plot
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation -- https://www.healthdata.org/gbd
Over 7 Billion People Face Unsafe Air
Health Effects Institute -- https://www.healtheffects.org/
April 2018 / Air Pollution Global Health
Health Effects Institute has issued State of Global Air 2018 — the first update of the annual report and interactive website launched in 2017 with the aim of providing “one-stop shopping” for the latest trends in air quality and its impact on human health around the world.
For the first time, the 2018 report and website include worldwide estimates of exposure and health burdens from burning of solid fuels inside people’s homes. In 2016, a total of 2.5 billion people — one in three global citizens — were exposed to household air pollution from the use of solid fuels (for example, wood, charcoal, coal dung, or other biomass) for cooking and heating. Most live in low- and middle-income countries in Asia and Africa, and face a double burden: exposure to both indoor and outdoor air pollution...
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A GreenPolicy360 Proposal:
City Air Quality Study via Google Map App
A Proposed Crowdsourced Project
GreenPolicy360: Let's take this pilot project in Oakland and network with citizen science as a worldwide green best practice
Mapping Our Air -- https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/File:Mapping_Our_Air.png
Air Pollution *Will* Make You Sick
More than 95% of world's population breathe dangerous air, major study finds
The war against air pollution has begun – and it will be fought in cities
Air Pollution, Unborn, Babies and Health Catastrophe
Air pollution More harmful to Children in Cars
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Air Pollution Across the World
March 2017
China Premier Pledges: ‘We Will Make Our Skies Blue Again’
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BEIJING — Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has pledged to make the country's skies blue again and "work faster" to address pollution caused by coal burning.
His words to delegates at the opening of the National People's Congress highlight how reducing smog has become a priority for the leadership because of public discontent.
Related: Millions in China Learn to Live With Smog 'Airpocalypse'
In a report to China's ceremonial legislature, Li said that "people are desperately hoping for" faster progress in improving air quality.
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Global Updates
People in the UK are 64 times as likely to die of air pollution as those in Sweden and twice as likely as those in the US, figures from the World Health Organisation reveal.
"It is deeply tragic that around 3 million lives are cut short worldwide because the air we breathe is dirty and polluted. In the UK, air pollution is a public health crisis hitting our most vulnerable the hardest – our children, people with a lung condition and the elderly."
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One Day's Toxic Air News Pulled from the Headlines
• https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170210084550.htm
• https://e360.yale.edu/features/origins-of-north-indias-air-pollution
• https://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-air-pollution-alzheimers-20170131-story.html
• https://www.webmd.com/diabetes/news/20170210/air-pollution-may-raise-risk-of-type-2-diabetes#1
• https://qz.com/905656/air-pollution-is-increasing-in-africa-along-with-rapid-urbanization/
• https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/02/170202122751.htm
Decades ago Mexico City's air pollution was so poor, birds would fall out of the sky -- dead. Locals said living there was like smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, according to one report. In response, Mexico City took several steps to try to improve air quality including restricting driving one or two days during the weekdays. The program has had negligible results.
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The Statistics, the Health Impacts, the Damages of Lives -- and What Are the Solutions?
• https://www.who.int/phe/health_topics/outdoorair/databases/cities/en/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_pollution
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What Can Be Done
Making Progress: Models of Environmental Initiatives that Have Made a Difference
GreenPolicy360 siterunner: Los Angeles, the 'worst in the world' in air quality in the 1950s. Now LA and California are 'out in front' of clean air and environmental initiatives, providing models of what can be done nationally and internationally.
California political leaders Jerry Brown and George Brown, out in front with a first-generation legislative regulation of air pollution
• https://www.greenpolicy360.net/w/California_out_in_front_in_a_Green_future
From the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development
• https://www.igsd.org/california-governor-signs-worlds-toughest-super-pollutant-law/
California / AB 1493, Pavley. Vehicular emissions: greenhouse gases
...a model of green legislative best practices
...the "Pavley Law"', first legislation in the world to regulate greenhouse gas emissions of passenger vehicles... these visionary California environmental protection laws/regulations became model air quality / air pollution legislation and were ultimately adopted by the United States as the national standard.
- Jerry Brown (2015): "California has this history that really derives from the experience of smog in the Los Angeles Basin, and the response to that over many administrations has led to where we are today. As a matter of fact the standards that were established under the so-called Pavley Law, 'the first legislation in the world to regulate greenhouse gas emissions of passenger vehicles, were ultimately adopted by the United States as the national standard'".
"Today Los Angeles has ten times as many cars as it did in the 50s, and the air is 95 percent cleaner. That’s a pretty dramatic move, one that countries like China and India are taking notice of."
"So we’ve had that history. As far as people’s attitudes I would say that there is a strong preference for favoring policies that nurture the environment as oppose to those that disrupt them."
"But if you dig deeper into the use of things or creature comforts, I don’t think we’ve attained the level of enlightenment that Pope Francis is calling for."
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Regulation of Air Pollution Needed Around the World
• https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/dec/02/where-world-most-polluted-city-air-pollution
• https://www.cnn.com/2014/05/08/world/asia/india-pollution-who/index.html
• https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/06/which-is-the-worlds-most-polluted-city/
A Lung Specialist Explains
Most Polluted Air in Cities of the World
• https://www.stateoftheair.org/2015/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html
• https://www.stateoftheair.org/2014/city-rankings/most-polluted-cities.html
Breathing Poison
• https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-32352722 - Breathing Poison
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Smog, ground-level ozone, causes a host of respiratory consequences, ranging from coughing, wheezing and throat irritation, to asthma, increased risk of infection, and permanent damage to lung tissue.
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Via the Guardian, 2016 / “We have a public health emergency in many countries from pollution. It’s dramatic, one of the biggest problems we are facing globally, with horrible future costs to society,” said Maria Neira, head of public health at the World Health Organization. “Air pollution leads to chronic diseases which require hospital space. Before, we knew that pollution was responsible for diseases like pneumonia and asthma. Now we know that it leads to bloodstream, heart and cardiovascular diseases, too – even dementia. We are storing up problems. These are chronic diseases that require hospital beds. The cost will be enormous.”
- The toxic haze blanketing cities could be clearly seen last week from the international space station.
- Poor air quality is killing millions and threatening to overwhelm health services across the globe.
- With nearly 1.4 million deaths a year, China has the most air pollution fatalities, followed by India with 645,000 and Pakistan with 110,000.
- The latest scientific research, published in the journal Nature, suggests that air pollution now kills more people a year than malaria and HIV combined, and in many countries accounts for roughly 10 times more deaths than road accidents.
- According to the WHO, air quality is deteriorating around the world to the point where only one in eight people live in cities that meet recommended air pollution levels.
- "We are only just learning about the scale of the toxicity of coal and diesel... This is a deep, deep problem."
Video of 'Smog' in Delhi, the world's most polluted air
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Air pollution: a dark cloud of filth poisons the world’s cities
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See also: Citizen Science
What you can do about air pollution
Many new citizen-led initiatives are using science, sensors and the Internet to track, and deal with, levels of air pollution...
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/atmotube-the-portable-air-pollution-monitor-environment#/
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- Wearable Devices / 'Digibody'
With Wearable Devices That Monitor Air Quality, Scientists Can Crowdsource Pollution Maps
Emerging technology means anyone with a smartphone can become a mobile environmental monitoring station
• https://www.mytzoa.com/#homepage
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• https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/741031201/airbeam-share-and-improve-your-air
• https://pubs.acs.org/stoken/presspac/presspac/abs/10.1021/es505362x
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References:
Air Pollution G. Tyler Miller’s Living in the Environment - http://slideplayer.com/slide/5994183/
Air Visibility Monitoring (Android app) - http://robotics.usc.edu/~mobilesensing/Projects/AirVisibilityMonitoring
Citizen Science Alliance - http://www.citizensciencealliance.org/
Clean Technica - https://cleantechnica.com/2012/03/09/care-about-your-heart-lungs-you-should-care-about-carbon-emissions-driving-costs-more-than-gas-prices-show/
Climate Change and Citizen Science - http://www.slideshare.net/CitizenScienceCentral/citizen-science-and-climate-change-west
Cyber Citizens - http://up.secondwavemedia.com/innovationnews/smartphone100913.aspx
Eight Apps that Turn Citizens into Scientists - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/8-apps-that-turn-citizens-into-scientists/
Environmental Health Perspectives / Ischemic Heart Disease Mortality and Air Pollution - http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/advpub/2015/12/ehp.1509777.acco.pdf
Green Car Congress - http://www.greencarcongress.com/2012/03/us-study-of-miners-links-heavy-exposure-to-diesel-exhaust-to-increased-risk-of-lung-cancer-death-res.html
Mobile Apps for Citizen Science (via Smithsonian) - http://www.ssec.si.edu/blog/mobile-apps-for-citizen-science
NASA Earth Exchange (NEX platform for scientific collaboration, knowledge sharing and research for the Earth science community) - https://nex.nasa.gov/nex/
National Science Foundation (US/"Citizen Science") - http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/citizenscience.jsp
NOAA - http://www.climate.gov/teaching/resources/climate-change-and-citizen-science
Open Scientist - http://www.openscientist.org/p/citizen-science-for-your-phone.html
Open University Lab - http://www.open.ac.uk/researchprojects/open-science/
Project Noah (National Geographic) - http://www.projectnoah.org/
Scientific American - http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/
Sensr, Citizen Science app (Carnegie Mellon) - http://www.sensr.org/
You can be a scientist too (EPA) - http://www.epa.gov/climatestudents/scientists/citizen-science.html
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Pledge for Planetary Health
Environmental Conservation & Medicine -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_medicine
Conservation medicine is an emerging, interdisciplinary field that studies the relationship between human and animal health, and environmental conditions. Also known as ecological medicine, environmental medicine, or medical geology
Conservation medicine teams may involve physicians and veterinarians working alongside researchers and clinicians from diverse disciplines, including microbiologists, pathologists, landscape analysts, marine biologists, toxicologists, epidemiologists, climate biologists, anthropologists, economists, and political scientists.
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Subcategories
This category has the following 8 subcategories, out of 8 total.
A
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Pages in category "Air Pollution"
The following 53 pages are in this category, out of 53 total.
C
E
- Each of us can make a positive difference
- Earth Science
- Environmental agreements
- Environmental full-cost accounting
- Environmental Law, Rollbacks under Trump 2016-20
- Environmental Laws and Modern Environmental Movement
- Environmental Protection Agency
- ESA Living Planet Announcement - May 2022
- European Union Green Deal - Fit for 55
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- George E. Brown Jr
- Glasgow Climate Summit - Pledges, Promises, Declarations - What's Next Up
- Going Green
- Google Earth Timelapse
- Green Stories of the Day
- Green Stories of the Day - GreenPolicy360 Archive
- GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2013
- GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2014
- GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2015
- GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2016
- GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2017
- GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2018
- GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2019
- GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2020
- GreenPolicy360 Archive Highlights 2023
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Media in category "Air Pollution"
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