The
war against air pollution has begun – and it will be fought in
cities
Damian Carrington
The
air pollution crisis is getting worse. As the world becomes
increasingly urbanised, the battle will be won or lost on the streets
of our cities
Monday 13 February
2017 06.08 GMT
You never see ‘air
pollution’ written as the cause on death certificates,” an expert
once told me. If it was, she suggested, the enormous toll toxic air
takes on the health of billions of the world’s people would prompt
a global emergency response.
But the winds of
change are now blasting the air pollution crisis to greater
prominence – driven by new data, revelations about the impact of
poisonous air on virtually all aspects of health and, crucially, the
increasing anger of affected people and communities.
There is no doubt
that air pollution is a global crisis: it causes 6.5 million early
deaths a year. That is double the number of people lost to HIV/Aids,
tuberculosis and malaria combined, and four times the number killed
on the world’s roads. In Africa, air pollution kills three times
more people than malnutrition.
Half the early
deaths result from indoor cooking with smoky fuels, a problem linked
closely to poverty and readily solved, if the will and means exist.
But the other half results from outdoor air pollution – caused by
traffic, power stations, factories, construction, heating and more –
and is far more dispersed and harder to tackle.
It is also getting
worse, as the world’s population swells towards 9 billion and
cities rapidly grow. Particulate pollution is the scourge of India,
home to a host of terribly polluted cities, and many parts of the
developing world where urbanisation is most rapid.
But developed
nations face air pollution problems too. In Europe, the deviousness
of car manufacturers and the failure of regulators have left diesel
vehicles belching out many times more nitrogen dioxide than was ever
thought safe. In the UK alone, illegal levels of NO2 cause more than
60 premature deaths a day.
Toxic air is a major
cause of heart attacks, strokes and lung diseases – the causes that
are put in death certificates. But researchers are finding ever more
varied and worrying impacts of breathing noxious air.
Air pollution has
now been linked to increased mental illness, diabetes and kidney
disease, and toxic nanoparticles have been recently discovered in
brains, suggesting a link to degenerative brain diseases such as
Alzheimer’s. It is even thought to be prematurely ageing the faces
of city dwellers, by accelerating wrinkles and age spots.
But perhaps the most
worrying impacts are on children, whose lung development is stunted
and whose intelligence can be reduced. Unicef found recently that 300
million children live in areas with extreme air pollution – six
times higher than international guidelines – and that almost 90% of
the world’s children live in places where outdoor air pollution
exceeds World Health Organization limits.
Amid this gloom,
there are glimmers of hope. China, for many years home to the worst
air pollution hotspots in the world, has seen remarkable improvements
in many places. Its drive to clear the air has been propelled by both
the public’s concern for their health and fears about climate
change.
Increasing efforts
to fight global warming by cutting fossil fuel burning will help cut
air pollution, not least because the rollout of electric cars is
finally gathering pace. Some major world cities are also tackling
direct action against their traffic smog, by setting dates by which
the worst polluting cars will be banned. The huge cuts in health
costs that could be won with cleaner air are also becoming better
understood.
The battle against
air pollution has finally begun, and it is on the streets of the
world’s burgeoning cities that it will be won, or lost.
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