When we think of threats to our lives,
many of us instantly jumped infectious diseases,
non-communicable diseases or even traffic accidents.
But what if I told you one of the major
threats to an individual's life is air pollution?
You'd probably be shocked and lost for words.
Well,
over the years,
the world's overall air quality has decreased and pollution emissions
have drastically increased.
This is like to major negative consequences,
including an elevator risk of developing numerous diseases.
Before we move forward,
it is important to understand what is air pollution. In
the simplest of terms,
Air,
pollution,
is composed of different chemicals and particles that are harmful
to many living organisms,
such as you, me, or any other living animal,
or plant on our planet.
There are a multitude of pollutants that exist in our atmosphere,
but the major air pollutants can be split into two categories.
The first being gaseous pollutants,
which are pollutants that are in gas form such as
carbon dioxide or sulfur dioxide.
The second category is particulate matter (PM),
which are fine solid particles that are suspended in gas,
such as dust or smoke.
Generally speaking,
the smaller the PM,
the more harmful it is to us and the environment.
Now these pollutants don't just appear out of nowhere, they
typically come from natural sources or man-made sources. Examples of
natural sources of pollutants
include volcanic eruptions, forest fires, and allergens.
However,
the most abundant source of air pollutants is none other
from man-made sources or otherwise known as human activities such
as that
from energy
use and agriculture.
All of these sources release gases such as carbon dioxide,
sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane.
To be more specific.
Some of the major man-made sources include burning
fossil fuels,
like coal and gasoline, burning the biomass of
animals such as cows,
cleaning solvents and deforestation,
which is not exactly releasing gases but causes a
problem because there are fewer trees to "clean"
(for better words)
the air. But
what does this all mean?
Why is it bad?
Well,
let's take a step back and look at it from
a global perspective.
Over the years,
pollution has risen drastically all over the world.
However, its impact on our health affects
the population disproportionately. Due to the lack of access to
cleaner energy and different farming techniques in developing countries,
such as Delhi India,
the amount of air pollution in those regions has reached
a severe level. As mentioned by the state of global
Air in 2020, "Outdoor and household particulate matter pollutions
contributed to the death of more than 116,000
Indian infants
in their first month of life in 2019.
More than half of these deaths were associated with PM 2.5
and others were linked to the use of solid fuels such as
charcoal,
wood and animal dung for cooking."
There have been many
statements similar to that of Delhi,
India's when it comes to the health and air pollution.
The World Health Organization,
otherwise known as WHO has estimated that exposure to air
pollution has caused around 4.2
million deaths
annually.
They have now ranked diseases attributed by air pollution on
par with other major health risk such as unhealthy diets
and tobacco smoking. Because of this risk, after 15 years,
the World Health Organization has decided to double down on
their proposal and make the emission guidelines
significantly more strict in 2021.
The World Health organization's new guidelines recommend,
air quality levels for 6
pollutants: Particulate
matter or PM,
Ozone,
nitrogen dioxide,
sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide.
The World
Health Organization has not outright banned the dangerous practices that
lead to the increase in these pollutants, but rather set into motion
a proposed limit on the emissions of the substances
in the environment. The distinction for air quality guidelines is separated into two notable
categories, an annual and an hourly emission limit per m^3.
When comparing the guidelines for 2005 to 2021
we are able to see the percent change of these emission limits.
For instance for PM 2.5,
the annual of mission limit from 2005 to 2021 has
decreased by 50% and for the 24 hour limit
it has decreased by 40%. For PM 10
the percent change is not as high as PM 2.5,
since they pose less of a threat for our respiratory
and cardiac systems,
but it did decreased by 20% annually and 10% for
the 24-hour limit. As for ozone,
they added a new limit called peak season limit
due to the visible trends in certain seasons. Nitrogen's annual emission limit
has decreased by 75% and its new 24-hour limit
has been at it.
Now,
when it comes to sulfur dioxide and carbon monoxide they are
considered to be so detrimental to our health
that there are no manual guidelines, but rather only 24-hour
guidelines.
Surprisingly, is sulfur
dioxide is the only limit that has increased,
but when it comes to the most deadly gas,
carbon monoxide,
our air quality has reached a point where we need
a 24-hour limit
that is only 1/10th of sulfur's limit.
The World Health Organization hopes
that by placing these new guidelines
it will help reduce the enormous health burden
attributed by air pollution.
It has been estimated that 80% of deaths related to
PM 2.5
could be avoided in the world,
if the current air pollution levels
were reduced the limits for proposed
in the updated guidelines.
Now,
if we think about what air pollutants are
we'd realize that they float in the air that we
breathe in daily, so an organ
that is ultimately impacted
is our lungs and in general our respiratory system.
Worldwide air pollution is responsible for about 29% of deaths per year:
55% of these deaths are attributed to respiratory infections.
A disease that has predominantly resulted from air
pollutants is Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
or COPD.
COPD is characterized by an inflammatory response
in the airways resulting from air irritants. When noxious particles or
gases
enter our body,
our immune system becomes hyper activated and begins the secrete
molecules that inflames and damages our
lungs. This eventually causes shortness of breath, excess phlegm and
coughing. Not only can air pollutants result in the development of COPD
especially in developing countries,
but it can cause further impairment of COPD's already
reduced pulmonary function or at its worst.=
it can lead to death in COPD patients.
Another disease that could be a result of air pollution
is lung cancer,
which is typically impacting
those who live in big cities.
Research has shown that an increase in road traffic
was associated with lung cancer.
The immense
release of particulate matter and nitrogen
oxide in cities were associated with higher risk of lung cancer.
But how does these toxins cause these damages?
Well, in reality, there's multiple ways.
But simply put these tiny,
but harmful particles,
build up in the lungs and damage
how the cells
replicate. This can lead to DNA damage which can cause
cancer.
Another major health risk
that can be attributed to air pollution and is impacting children
the most is asthma.
Air pollution can affect asthma,
prevalence,
onset, symptoms, and the reaction time to treatment. In
particular air quality plays an important role in the inception
of asthma early in life
and as a trigger of asthma
exasperation later in life.
Similar to the mechanism of COPD described earlier,
asthma is caused by irritants making its way into the
airway that causes the lungs to tighten up and swell up.
This is also due to the inflammatory response by our immune system.
Overall,
the main points that we covered is that 1) air
pollution has greatly risen over the years,
due to the human activity and in turn has caused
more health problems.
2) The World
Health Organization has updated their guidelines
15 years later with greatly reduced limits because of this
worry. And 3)
some examples of health issues attributed to are the Chronic
Obstructive Pulmonary Disease,
lung cancer,
and asthma.