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Clean Urban Air

Scyscrapers in smog, Indonesia

This is the 2007 draft on urban air quality. You will get the newest version here.

Humans need healthy air, but especially in urban settlements there is a high level of air pollution. This results in respiratory and cardiovascular diseases.

Affected people and foundations of life: 5% of all cases of lung, trachea, and bronchus cancers can be attributed to urban air pollution. The principal cause is the increasing combustion of fossil fuels for traffic, power generation, etc. (and so on) Particularly cities in Asia and the Western Pacific Region are concerned. (WHO [World Health Organization] 2002, 69, 226.) The atmosphere's ability to cleanse itself of pollutants has declined by about a tenth since preindustrial times (MA [Millennium Assessment] 2005, 42).

Deaths: 799 000 people per year (WHO 2002, 226).

Loss of able life-years: 7.87 million healthy life-years annually (DALYs [Disability-adjusted life years], WHO 2002, 228).

Targets/goals: no international target.

Trend: ? no trend data available.

Measures: Advisable measures are filtering or avoidance of exhaust fumes from vehicles, power plants, and industry, the switch to renewable energy, traffic reduction, as well as expansion of public transport and bicycle traffic.


Annotations

DALYs: Disability-adjusted life years.
One DALY represents the loss of one year of equivalent full health. DALYs are the sum of the years of life lost due to premature mortality (YLL) in the population and the years lost due to disability (YLD) for incident cases of the health condition. (WHO 2004, 95f.)

Sources

Draft (2007)

Photo credit: © GTZ/Andreas König