Air Pollution Sources, Statistics, and
Health Effects: Introduction
Ole Hertel
1 , Matthew Stanley Johnson
2,3 and
Michael Evan Goodsite
4
1 Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus
University, Roskilde, Denmark
2 Department of Chemistry, University of
Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
3 Airlabs, Copenhagen, Denmark
4 School of Civil, Environmental and Mining
Engineering, The Australian School of Petroleum,
The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA,
Australia
Air pollution threatens our health, environment, and
climate. The sources of air pollution are numerous
anthropogenic and natural emissions; some are pollution in their own right, and some trigger the formation of secondary pollution. Detailed knowledge
of the sources of pollution and the transformations
of pollution in the atmosphere is the best possible
basis for effective and cost-effective management
strategies. While this knowledge is the basis of
environmental management as regards emissions
standards and best-practice pollution control systems, it is also critically important to society as it
seeks to adopt policies and behaviors to reduce air
pollution and its associated impacts and direct
resources toward research and technological development to achieve sustainability. In fact, reducing
air pollution emissions and thereby improving air
quality will help us to meet a series of United
Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Environmental pollution contributes to poverty, low crop
yields, and disease, and the fight for resources
leads to political instability. Thus, reducing air pollution helps us achieve sustainability by reducing
poverty and inequality, providing jobs in the clean
technology sector, and reducing and overcoming
climate change. During the 2020 Corona crises,
air pollution levels have decreased substantially
in urban areas around the world because of reduced
travel and industrial activity. These improvements
in air quality have made real some of the improvements that can be obtained from, e.g., moving
towards a society less dependent on fossil fuels.
Improved cleaning technologies are the result of
both pull and push strategies. This can be seen in
the vehicle industry where strict emission standards have forced manufacturers to develop new
technologies. These developments have been
important for improving air quality in many parts
of the world over the past two to three decades.
Our knowledge about air pollution is based on
data obtained from field measurements, laboratory studies, and air pollution modeling. It is
often through the combination of information
from these very different types of studies and
activities that new and deeper understanding is
established. One example is our understanding
of the pollution distribution inside urban street
canyons, achieved through painstaking analyses
of data from monitoring stations in busy streets,
wind tunnel experiments, and models of traffic
emissions, photochemistry, and air flow. Air pollution assessments are often based on combinations of measurements and model calculations. In
reporting air quality levels in the scientific community, for industry and environmental agencies,
it is becoming standard practice to include indicative data from air pollution modeling. Indicative
measurements are sometimes also included in
such reporting based, e.g., on passive samplers
with coarse temporal resolution. More recently a
variety of new low-cost sensor-based measurement devices have been designed and deployed.
Electrochemical and metal-oxide sensors can provide high temporal and spatial resolution and may
be able to substantially extend the abilities of
established monitoring stations to investigate
local air pollution sources and remediation strategies. It should be noted that such devices are not
intended to replace high-quality monitors and
measurement stations since their precision
and accuracy are not sufficient for monitoring
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021
M. E. Goodsite et al. (eds.), Air Pollution Sources, Statistics and Health Effects,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0596-7_911
Originally published in
R. A. Meyers (ed.), Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC,
part of Springer Nature 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2493-6_911-3
1
Health Effects: Introduction
Ole Hertel
1 , Matthew Stanley Johnson
2,3 and
Michael Evan Goodsite
4
1 Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus
University, Roskilde, Denmark
2 Department of Chemistry, University of
Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
3 Airlabs, Copenhagen, Denmark
4 School of Civil, Environmental and Mining
Engineering, The Australian School of Petroleum,
The University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA,
Australia
Air pollution threatens our health, environment, and
climate. The sources of air pollution are numerous
anthropogenic and natural emissions; some are pollution in their own right, and some trigger the formation of secondary pollution. Detailed knowledge
of the sources of pollution and the transformations
of pollution in the atmosphere is the best possible
basis for effective and cost-effective management
strategies. While this knowledge is the basis of
environmental management as regards emissions
standards and best-practice pollution control systems, it is also critically important to society as it
seeks to adopt policies and behaviors to reduce air
pollution and its associated impacts and direct
resources toward research and technological development to achieve sustainability. In fact, reducing
air pollution emissions and thereby improving air
quality will help us to meet a series of United
Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Environmental pollution contributes to poverty, low crop
yields, and disease, and the fight for resources
leads to political instability. Thus, reducing air pollution helps us achieve sustainability by reducing
poverty and inequality, providing jobs in the clean
technology sector, and reducing and overcoming
climate change. During the 2020 Corona crises,
air pollution levels have decreased substantially
in urban areas around the world because of reduced
travel and industrial activity. These improvements
in air quality have made real some of the improvements that can be obtained from, e.g., moving
towards a society less dependent on fossil fuels.
Improved cleaning technologies are the result of
both pull and push strategies. This can be seen in
the vehicle industry where strict emission standards have forced manufacturers to develop new
technologies. These developments have been
important for improving air quality in many parts
of the world over the past two to three decades.
Our knowledge about air pollution is based on
data obtained from field measurements, laboratory studies, and air pollution modeling. It is
often through the combination of information
from these very different types of studies and
activities that new and deeper understanding is
established. One example is our understanding
of the pollution distribution inside urban street
canyons, achieved through painstaking analyses
of data from monitoring stations in busy streets,
wind tunnel experiments, and models of traffic
emissions, photochemistry, and air flow. Air pollution assessments are often based on combinations of measurements and model calculations. In
reporting air quality levels in the scientific community, for industry and environmental agencies,
it is becoming standard practice to include indicative data from air pollution modeling. Indicative
measurements are sometimes also included in
such reporting based, e.g., on passive samplers
with coarse temporal resolution. More recently a
variety of new low-cost sensor-based measurement devices have been designed and deployed.
Electrochemical and metal-oxide sensors can provide high temporal and spatial resolution and may
be able to substantially extend the abilities of
established monitoring stations to investigate
local air pollution sources and remediation strategies. It should be noted that such devices are not
intended to replace high-quality monitors and
measurement stations since their precision
and accuracy are not sufficient for monitoring
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2021
M. E. Goodsite et al. (eds.), Air Pollution Sources, Statistics and Health Effects,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-0716-0596-7_911
Originally published in
R. A. Meyers (ed.), Encyclopedia of Sustainability Science and Technology, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC,
part of Springer Nature 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2493-6_911-3
1