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Air pollution hotspots are areas where air pollution emissions expose individuals to increased negative health effects. [239] They are particularly common in highly populated, urban areas, where there may be a combination of stationary sources (e.g. industrial facilities) and mobile sources (e.g. cars and trucks) of pollution.
Reaction with daylight ultraviolet (UV) rays and these precursors create ground-level ozone pollution. Ozone is known to have the following health effects at concentrations common in urban air: Irritation of the respiratory system, causing coughing, throat irritation, and/or an uncomfortable sensation in the chest.
Ground-level ozone, or tropospheric ozone, is the most concerning type of ozone pollution in urban areas and is increasing in general. [60] Ozone pollution in urban areas affects denser populations, and is worsened by high populations of vehicles, which emit pollutants NO 2 and VOCs, the main contributors to problematic ozone levels. [61]
Ozone depletion would magnify all of the effects of UV on human health, both positive (including production of vitamin D) and negative (including sunburn, skin cancer, and cataracts). In addition, increased surface UV leads to increased tropospheric ozone, which is a health risk to humans. [62]
The ozone hole was much more seen as a "hot issue" and imminent risk compared to global climate change, [13] as lay people feared a depletion of the ozone layer (ozone shield) risked increasing severe consequences such as skin cancer, cataracts, [23] damage to plants, and reduction of plankton populations in the ocean's photic zone. This was ...
The health and environmental impact of transport is significant because transport burns most of the world's petroleum.This causes illness and deaths from air pollution, including nitrous oxides and particulates, and is a significant cause of climate change through emission of carbon dioxide.
The World Health Organization guidelines were most recently updated in 2021. [1] The guidelines offer guidance about these air pollutants: particulate matter (PM), ozone (O 3), nitrogen dioxide (NO 2), sulfur dioxide (SO 2) and carbon monoxide (CO). [2] The WHO first released the air quality guidelines in 1987, then updated them in 1997. [2]
In 2022, the most comprehensive study of pharmaceutical pollution of the world's rivers found that it threatens "environmental and/or human health in more than a quarter of the studied locations". It investigated 1,052 sampling sites along 258 rivers in 104 countries, representing the river pollution of 470 million people.