Lara Martin Diaz
Invisible, inaudible and mostly imperceptible altogether, this nasty killer causes almost seven million deaths each year, most of them in low and middle income countries. We’re talking about air pollution: contamination inhaled daily by most of the world’s population with many direct and indirect negative effects on our health.
There are two types of air pollution: indoor and outdoor. Indoor air pollution is caused by everything we do inside our homes. The highest impact is reached in low income countries, where families tend to cook on open fires or stoves that require fuels such as wood and plant waste. These fuels produce smoke containing particulate matter and pollutants that can be very damaging for people’s health when inhaled, and cause respiratory diseases as well as increase the risk of many other conditions like heart disease and stroke.
Outdoor air pollution is caused by a much great variety of things, although the most important source is industry. The two most important outdoor pollutants are particulate matter and ozone. While death rates for indoor air pollution have gone down steadily for the past 30 years, the rates related to outdoor pollution have stayed constant. It has the greatest impact in North-African and South-East-Asian middle income countries, where it causes over 10% of the total deaths. Low income countries suffer less from the effects due to their lack of industrialization, although the death rates have increased there over the last 30 years. Outdoor air pollution causes stroke, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases.
Improving indoor air quality in low-income countries
To battle indoor air pollution in low-income countries, the most important point of action is changing the fuel with which families cook their meals. As this graph from Our World in Data shows, more expensive fuels are also cleaner, the cleanest solid fuel being coal. Access to these fuels has to become easier and cheaper.
Figure 1: Households with higher incomes use cleaner and more efficient energy sources (Ritchie, 2017).
A promising success story of a fuel shift can be found in the Seychelles, where solid fuels were effectively substituted with liquefied petroleum gas. According to a UNEP report, less than 5% of Seychellois households still used solid fuel indoors in 2015.
Edmond Sanganyando, associate professor of environmental science, proposes a different solution for indoor air pollution in Africa in Eos Magazine. He sees an opportunity in the combination of solar energy and introduction of electrical stoves. Sunlight is an abundant energy source in Africa, and electrical stoves produce no indoor pollution at all, thus eliminating all health risks.
While harnessing renewables in the battle against indoor air pollution could have positive impacts on climate change as well, this solution might take years to implement and requires a lot of capital and know-how, as well as an initial investment from each household. Furthermore, a lot of regions in Africa are rural with scattered, low-density populations, which would complicate the establishments of an energy grid. Therefore, introducing electrical stoves should be regarded as a long-term solution and be developed alongside more short-term solutions that quickly respond to acute needs.
Outdoor air pollution
Outdoor air pollution has been linked to a broad range of negative outcomes: apart from the health effects listed above, correlations have been found with, a higher risk of autoimmune diseases, incidence of Covid-19 deaths and even the occurrence of violent crime. It can also cause unpleasant smells and in high concentrations even create smog, blocking out sunlight.
However, even though the health effects are well known, they are not listed as a cause very often. The first official time in the UK was in 2020, when air pollution was recognized as the cause of death of nine-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah in court. The girl suffered from a severe form of asthma and the continued exposure to nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter, which were present in very high levels in her home close to the South Circular Road, induced an asthma attack which would turn out to be fatal.
The pollutant levels in her surroundings exceeded local regulations and the WHO guidelines, which, according to the medical report, increased and maybe even induced her asthma. Her condition also worsened in winter, due to higher pollution levels in air in this season. This was used in the trial to prove the relationship between the pollution and her death.
How to reduce outdoor air pollution
If we want to reduce outdoor air pollution, the most logical solution is a reduction of our emissions. The biggest source of air pollution is the burning of fossil fuels for energy production and industry. If we want to reduce our emissions, we need to invest in green energy sources and more sustainable production methods. Other solutions include recycling and reusing products.
Countries should also make public transport more reliable and accessible for all of the population. Trains can still be very expensive, which encourages people to drive cars or take planes, especially for longer distances. As an exchange student, I find Switzerland a very pleasant exception to this rule: though still quite expensive, especially for non-Swiss people, the public transportation is extremely reliable, clean, comfortable and reaches a lot of places in the country swiftly and smoothly. The beautiful scenery is an amazing extra. I think a lot of other countries (mine, Belgium, not in the least) can take this as an example to improve their system!
Another important factor is reducing our consumption. At this time, the average human consumes too much resources and generates a lot of emissions doing this. If we could cut down on consumption, a lot of emissions would aready be eliminated without changing anything in the production processes. The focus is often laid on green production, but I think green consumption, meaning, less consumption, should also put higher on the agenda. Phenomena such as food waste, high energy consumption and fast fashion are still wide spread and generate important amounts of emissions.
Conclusion
Overall, consequences of indoor and outdoor air pollution are fairly well-known. The challenge is to reduce them. A lot of different solutions are at hand, but implementing them in the right way and without compromising poor households will be a real adventure.
Sources
Household air pollution and health. (2021, 22 september). WHO. Retrieved June 1st 2022 from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/household-air-pollution-and-health
Laville, S. (2020, 16 december). Air pollution a cause in girl’s death, coroner rules in landmark case. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/dec/16/girls-death-contributed-to-by-air-pollution-coroner-rules-in-landmark-case
Mambondiyani, A. (2022, 31 mei). Air Pollution Killed a Million People in Africa in 2019. Eos. https://eos.org/articles/air-pollution-killed-a-million-people-in-africa-in-2019
Ritchie, H. (2017, 17 april). Air Pollution. Our World in Data. Retrieved June 1st 2022 from https://ourworldindata.org/air-pollution
United Nations Environment Programme. (2016, 20 oktober). Air Pollution: Africa’s Invisible, Silent Killer. Retrieved June 1st 2022 from https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/air-pollution-africas-invisible-silent-killer-1