What Are the Health and Environmental Problems Caused by Air Pollution?

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), human-generated air pollution is directly responsible for at least 2 million preventable human deaths worldwide annually. There is no one number like this that precisely quantifies the harms of air pollution to animal and plant life. Yet air pollution clearly devastates other living beings and indeed entire ecosystems. Air pollution inflicts serious health and environmental problems on both wealthier and poorer countries and increasingly on Earth as a whole.

Complexity

• Identifying, understanding and alleviating the health and environmental problems caused by air pollution is an urgent yet very complex matter. Numerous sources, such as industry, agriculture, transportation and solid waste disposal give rise to a large array of chemically distinct pollutants, including ground-level ozone, excess carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, lead, nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter and compounds such as lead and mercury that are designated "air toxics." These primary pollutants, as they are called, may interact and create so-called secondary pollutants. Indoor air pollution from household fuel burning is an especially serious problem in the developing world. Although the most dramatic, obvious harms of air pollution are frequently local, it increasingly has negative regional and even global consequences, including trans-boundary air pollution, upper-atmospheric ozone layer depletion, global dimming and global warming.

Human Diseases

• Scientists have long known that air pollution causes and/or worsens respiratory tract disorders, including bronchitis, tuberculosis, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung, nasal cavity and throat cancers. Scientists have also implicated air pollution in serious cardiovascular disorders such as life-threatening arrhythmias and myocardial infarction (heart attack). Air pollution has less well-known roles in reproductive health problems such as male and possibly female infertility, disrupted prenatal development, low birth weight, premature birth and increased infant mortality.

Harms to Animal and Plant Life

• Some animals may experience the same problems as humans from air pollution. Airborne pollutants directly damage and kill plants, hinder photosynthesis and cut crop yields. They render soils and bodies of water too acidic and over saturated with nutrients, causing, for example, algae blooms that kill off fish. Airborne pollutants worsen climate change, disrupting weather patterns and thus entire habitats and ecosystems. As part of nature, humans experience the repercussions of all these harms to animals and plants.

Solutions

• Individuals can help reduce air pollution through such measures as less driving and meat eating. However, the problems cannot be resolved purely at the individual level. Wide-scale public policy and action are also essential. Because humans, animals and plants are so interdependent, solutions also need to take whole ecosystems and even the entire global environment into account.