This report presents an overview of the state of air quality and its impacts on health in Africa.
Nepal is the world’s third most polluted country. Air pollution shortens average Nepalese life expectancy by 4.1 years, relative to what it would be if the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 5 μg/m3 was met.1 The highest concentrations of air pollution are observed in Nepal’s southwes...tern districts, which share their borders with the highly-polluted Indo-Gangetic Plain of India. Here, residents stand to lose nearly 7 years of life expectancy.
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During the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world’s economy slowed. Yet, the global annual average particulate pollution (PM2.5) was largely unchanged from 2019 levels. At the same time, growing evidence shows air pollution—even when experienced at very low levels—hurts human health. T...his recently led the World Health Organization (WHO) to revise its guideline for what it considers a safe level of exposure of particulate pollution, bringing most of the world—97.3 percent of the global population—into the unsafe zone. The AQLI finds that particulate air pollution takes 2.2 years off global average life expectancy, or a combined 17 billion life-years, relative to a world that met the WHO guideline. This impact on life expectancy is comparable to that of smoking, more than three times that of alcohol use and unsafe water, six times that of HIV/AIDS, and 89 times that of conflict and terrorism.
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Explore historical emissions of air pollutants from fuel use globally.
The Lancet Planetary Health Published:May 17, 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(22)00090-0
Every year pollution causes 9 million deaths—1 in every 6 deaths worldwide, according to a Lancet Commission on pollution and health.
While the number of deaths caused by household air pollution a...nd water pollution decreased from 2015 to 2019, overall deaths remain roughly the same because of a 7% increase in deaths caused by air pollution and toxic chemical pollution.
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The Global Carbon Project (GCP) integrates knowledge of greenhouse gases for human activities and the Earth system. Our projects include global budgets for three dominant greenhouse gases — carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide — and complementary efforts in urban, regional, cumulative, and... negative emissions.
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Carbon dioxide emissions are the primary driver of global climate change. It’s widely recognised that to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, the world needs to urgently reduce emissions. But, how this responsibility is shared between regions, countries, and individuals has been an endless p...oint of contention in international discussions.
This debate arises from the various ways in which emissions are compared: as annual emissions by country; emissions per person; historical contributions; and whether they adjust for traded goods and services. These metrics can tell very different stories.
We teamed up with the YouTube channel, Kurzgesagt, to produce a video which explored these different metrics in detail: ‘Who is responsible for climate change? – Who needs to fix it?’. All of the data and research featured in this video is contained in this article: below we look in detail at the many ways emissions are broken down.
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Air pollution’s impact on life expectancy in Nigeria is greater than that of HIV/AIDS and almost on par with malaria and unsafe water and sanitation, shortening the average Nigerian’s life expectancy by 1.8 years, relative to what it would be if the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline of 5... μg/m3 was met.1 Some areas of Nigeria fare much worse than average, with air pollution shortening lives by almost 4 years on average in parts of Taraba state in Northeastern Nigeria.
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Air Pollution in Africa: Real-time Air Quality Index Visual Map
Accessed on 06.03.2022
AirQ+: software tool for health risk assessment of air pollution
Website
Accessed on 06.03.2022
Air pollution is contamination of the indoor or outdoor environment by any chemical, physical or biological agent that modifies the natural characteristics of the atmosphere. Household combustion devices, motor vehicles, industrial facilities and forest fires are common sou...rces of air pollution. Pollutants of major public health concern include particulate matter, carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. Outdoor and indoor air pollution cause respiratory and other diseases and is an important source of morbidity and mortality.
Air pollution kills an estimated seven million people worldwide every year. WHO data shows that almost all of the global population (99%) breathe air that exceeds WHO guideline limits containing high levels of pollutants, with low- and middle-income countries suffering from the highest exposures. WHO is supporting countries to address air pollution.
From smog hanging over cities to smoke inside the home, air pollution poses a major threat to health and climate. The combined effects of ambient (outdoor) and household air pollution cause millions of premature deaths every year, largely as a result of increased mortality from stroke, heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, lung cancer and acute respiratory infections.
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India is the world’s second most polluted country. Air pollution shortens average Indian life expectancy by 5 years,
relative to what it would be if the World Health Organization (WHO) guideline fine particulate pollution (PM2.5) of 5 μg/m3 was met. Some areas of India fare much worse than avera...ge, with air pollution shortening lives by almost 10
years in the National Capital Territory of Delhi, the most polluted city in the world.
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Accessed on 06.03.2022
Outdoor air quality has improved since the 1990s, but many challenges remain in protecting Americans from air quality problems. Ground-level ozone, the main part of smog, and particle pollution are just two of the many threats to air quality and public health in the United St...ates.
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Accessed on 06.03.2022
Air pollution is the biggest environmental health risk in Europe
Air pollution is hard to escape, no matter where you live. It can seriously affect your health and the environment. Even though air quality in Europe has improved over recent decades, the levels of air pollutan...ts still exceed EU standards and the most stringent World Health Organization guidelines.
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Lancet Planet Health 2021; 5: e542–52
ITHIM refers to a range of related models and tools developed at CEDAR to perform integrated assessment of the health effects of transport scenarios and policies at the urban and national level. The health effects of transport policies are modelled through the changes in physical activity, road traf...fic injury risk, and exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) air pollution.
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M. Zaman et al. (eds.), Measuring Emission of Agricultural Greenhouse Gases
and Developing Mitigation Options using Nuclear and Related Techniques,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55396-8_
In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that to restrict global temperature rise to 1·5°C, greenhouse gas emissions must decrease 45% by 2030 compared with 2010, and reach net zero by 2050.1
The EU's air quality directives (2008/50/EC Directive on Ambient Air Quality and Cleaner Air for Europe and 2004/107/EC Directive on heavy metals and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons in ambient air) set pollutant concentrations thresholds that shall not be exceeded in a given period of time. In case... of exceedances, authorities must develop and implement air quality management plans. These plans should aim to bring concentrations of air pollutants to levels below the limit and target values.
Selected EU standards and the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines are summarised in the table below. These apply over differing periods of time because the observed health impacts associated with the various pollutants occur over different exposure times.
The WHO guideline values are set for the protection of health, and are generally stricter than the comparable politically agreed EU standards.
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Waste management options such as recycling, composting, incineration and landfill impact health and well-being in profound ways, particularly for people who work directly with waste or live and work around waste sites.