Air Pollution in the Mega-cities

Health concerns related to air pollution in large cities have been voiced repeatedly over the last decades. This paper uses two approaches to describe particulate matter (PM) levels in 56 of the largest cities of the world. One is based on data from PM monitoring, collected from various sources by t...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Current environmental health reports 2014-09, Vol.1 (3), p.185-191
Main Authors: Krzyzanowski, Michal, Apte, Joshua S., Bonjour, Sophie P., Brauer, Michael, Cohen, Aaron J., Prüss-Ustun, Annette M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air pollution
Air quality
Atmospheric models
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Biomedicine
Cities
Economic development
Emissions
Environmental Health
Environmental monitoring
Estimates
Fuel combustion
Global Environmental Health and Sustainability (JM Samet
Medicine/Public Health
Megacities
Outdoor air quality
Particulate emissions
Particulate matter
Pharmacology/Toxicology
Pollution sources
Population density
Quality control
Remote sensing
Section Editor
Solid fuels
Urban areas
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Health concerns related to air pollution in large cities have been voiced repeatedly over the last decades. This paper uses two approaches to describe particulate matter (PM) levels in 56 of the largest cities of the world. One is based on data from PM monitoring, collected from various sources by the World Health Organization. The other is based on the combination of atmospheric modelling, satellite remote sensing and surface monitoring data. According to both sources of information, at least 96 % of the populations of the large cities are exposed to PM 2.5 exceeding World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines levels. The cities with the highest PM concentrations and the lowest rates of air quality improvement over the past decade tend to be in countries at lower levels of economic development. Addressing local pollution sources, including transportation and solid fuel combustion for cooking and heating, may be effective in cleaning the air of the most polluted and less economically developed cities.
ISSN:2196-5412
2196-5412
DOI:10.1007/s40572-014-0019-7