In addition to being one of the main environmental problems along with climate change, air pollution is a serious global public health problem with effects so harmful to humans that the World Health Organization (WHO) equates them with those caused by the smoking or poor diet. According to the organization, which updated its air quality database last April, 99% of humanity currently suffers pollution levels higher than advisable, with people living in poor and developing countries of development the most exposed.
The WHO estimates that each year there are about seven million premature deaths due to the effects of air pollution, mainly due to non-communicable diseases that can be cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological and also of other organs. For the organization, “clean air should be a fundamental right and condition for healthy and productive societies” and therefore urges a global response to this challenge, which involves stopping the use of fossil fuels.
In addition to outdoor air pollution, some 2.6 billion people are exposed to dangerous levels of indoor pollution due to the use of fuels to make fires and fuel stoves that use paraffin, biomass – wood, animal manure and agricultural waste. or coal. Air pollution can also contribute to the acceleration of the development of cardiovascular diseases. According to the Federation of Cardiovascular Diseases (FEC), “if exposure to pollution is continuous, it can cause long-term thickening and accumulation of fat in the arteries and lead to atherosclerosis.”
In guidelines updated in 2021, the WHO establishes that the pollution limits must be set at an average annual concentration of 5 µg/m3 and a 24-hour average of 15 µg/m3 when talking about PM2.5 particles. , the most dangerous because they penetrate the lungs and bloodstream and are carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen dioxide and sulfur dioxide. However, most cities exceed 35 µg/m3.
Combustion devices, motor vehicles, industry, energy generation and consumption, forest fires and waste incineration are the usual sources of pollution and also the emission of greenhouse gases.
For this reason, the WHO emphasizes that policies aimed at reducing pollution (investments in favor of sustainable land use, less polluting means of transportation, energy efficiency in homes, among others), in addition to being beneficial for health, contribute to the fight against climate change. “The high prices of fossil fuels, energy security and the urgency of facing the double health challenge of air pollution and climate change highlight the urgent need to move more quickly towards a world less dependent on fuels fossils” stated a few months ago Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, general director of the organization.
There are currently a record number of 117 countries and more than 6,000 cities monitoring air quality. And the conclusions are clear: 17% of cities in rich countries are below the recommended thresholds established by the WHO, while in poor and developing countries, they are less than 1% of cities. However, the differences between rich and poor countries are increasingly narrowing, warns the organization, which insists on the need for a global response to this challenge.
