Impact of Air Pollution on Public Health

The air we breathe contains emissions from many different sources: industry, motor vehicles, heating and commercial sources, household fuels as well as tobacco smoke. The effects of air pollution on health have been intensively studied in recent years. The results of these studies showed that air pollution harms human health and particularly is harmful for those who are already vulnerable because of their age as children and older people or existing health problems. The epidemiological evidence suggests that adverse health effects are dependent on both exposure concentrations and length of exposure, and that long-term exposures have larger, more persistent cumulative effects than short-term exposures [1]. Ambient air pollution has been associated with a multitude of health effects, including mortality, respiratory and cardiovascular hospitalizations, changes in lung function and asthma attacks. Current scientific evidence indicates that air pollution from the combustion of fossil fuels causes a spectrum of health effects from allergy to death. Recent assessments suggest that the public health impacts may be considerable. Air pollution is associated with a broad spectrum of acute and chronic health effects, the nature of which may vary depending on constituent of the pollutants as well as the group of the population. Current exposure to PM from anthropogenic sources leads to the loss of 8.6 months of life expectancy in Europe – from around 3 months in Finland to more than 13 months in Belgium. The most recent estimates of impacts of PM on mortality, based on PM10 and PM2.5 monitoring data in 40 European countries, indicate that close to 500 000 deaths per year are accelerated due to exposure to ambient PM in those countries. According to the WHO Health Reports, air pollution at current levels in European cities is responsible for a significant burden of deaths, hospital admissions and exacerbation of symptoms, especially for cardiovascular disease. Because of the tremendous number of people affected, the impact of air pollution on cardiovascular disease represents a serious public health problem. Results from research studies have demonstrated a strong relationship between levels of airborne particles, sulfur dioxide and other fossil fuel emissions and risk of early death from heart disease. People with pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure, previous heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease and high cholesterol have been shown to be especially vulnerable. The results of a long-term study on influence of common air pollutants on health of US residents showed that individuals living in the more polluted cities had a higher risk of hospitalization and early death from pulmonary and heart