Air pollution is a significant environmental problem facing our day which can be described as the presence of pollutants in the air. These pollutants are toxic chemicals and compounds that lower air quality and cause malefic effects on humans, animals, plants' health, or the environment when released into the air (1).
Air pollution can be broken down into two categories as indoor and outdoor air pollution. Indoor air pollution is the air inside the buildings with dust, dirt, or gasses used for heating where people mostly spend their time, meanwhile outdoor air pollution is the ambient air outside with many pollutants (4). The pollutants that affect air pollution are caused by anthropogenic sources (the sources created by people) such as the emissions from cars, planes, factories, aerosol cans, etc. and the rest of the number of pollutants are caused by natural sources such as smoke from wildfires (uncontrollable fire occur in a rural area) and ash from volcanoes (3).
It is determined that large cities (where emissions are concentrated) in poor and developing countries tend to have more presence of air pollution than cities in developed countries. That shows that people who live in poor or developing countries expose too much more air pollution than people in developed countries. Exposure to air pollution has harmful effects on the human body as it can vary to the conditions of the body's organs. These effects can be divided into short-term effects (which don’t last for a long time as they aren’t permanent) and long-term effects(which can last for years or entire life). The symptoms that appear during short-term effects can be sorted like coughing, difficulty breathing, headache, etc. meanwhile, the ones during long-term effects are respiratory diseases, cancer, cardiovascular damage, neural damage, etc. The figure of death that air pollution is responsible for is about 7 million each year around the globe which evidently shows that these effects can’t be ignored (2)/(5).
An important effect that air pollution is linked with is climate change which is an important problem of our era is the long-term changes in an area’s climate features due to the temperatures as a result of global warming which is thought to be occasioned by greenhouse gasses(heat-trapping gasses) such as carbon dioxide and methane that are the air pollutants (6)/(7). These air pollutants cause the greenhouse effect by preventing the heat that the sun provides to leave the atmosphere and return by trapping it in the atmosphere. The gasses with the amount that increases as they are trapped, cause global warming. As global warming occurs, temperatures increase and end with climate change (8).
In conclusion, air pollution is a problem that affects our world in many ways so we should be aware of the results of air pollution and try to improve solutions for that.
References:
1-What is Air Pollution: Environmental Pollution Centers. What Is Air Pollution | Environmental Pollution Centers. (n.d.). Retrieved December 25, 2022, from https://www.environmentalpollutioncenters.org/air/
2-June 22, 2021 J. M. J. T. (2022, December 12). Air pollution: Everything you need to know. NRDC. Retrieved December 25, 2022, from https://www.nrdc.org/stories/air-pollution-everything-you-need-know#whatis
3-Air Pollution. National Geographic Society. (n.d.). Retrieved December 25, 2022, from https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/air-pollution
4-Indoor and outdoor air pollution. Pulmonology Advisor. (2019, January 23). Retrieved December 25, 2022, from https://www.pulmonologyadvisor.com/home/decision-support-in-medicine/pulmonary-medicine/indoor-and-outdoor-air-pollution/
5-Center for Science Education. Effects of Air Pollution | Center for Science Education. (n.d.). Retrieved December 25, 2022, from https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/air-quality/effects-air-pollution
6-United Nations. (n.d.). What is climate change? United Nations. Retrieved December 25, 2022, from https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-climate-change
7-Air Pollution and climate change: Two sides of the same coin. UNEP. (n.d.). Retrieved December 25, 2022, from https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/air-pollution-and-climate-change-two-sides-same-coin
8-Center for Science Education. Air Quality and Climate Change | Center for Science Education. (n.d.). Retrieved December 25, 2022, from https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/air-quality/air-quality-and-climate-change#:~:text=Some%20Air%20Pollutants%20Cause%20the,causing%20the%20climate%20to%20warm.
Comments