App measures global facility to just breathe
Go to any number of capital cities and chances are you will be able to do something that was impossible 10 or even five years ago: check how safe it is to breathe the air there.
From London to Los Angeles to Beijing, information about air pollution levels is available at the tap of a smartphone app.
Many applications use data from public air-quality monitoring stations.
Some companies have gone further, producing wearable gadgets they say can monitor pollution in real time.
“This will allow you to make lifestyle decisions such as where to find the freshest air to go for a run, where to plan a picnic, or even allow you to find the hot spots of air pollution in your neighbourhood,” says California-based Tzoa, a company that develops trackers small enough to be clipped to a backpack.
As populations have ballooned, so have cars, coal power stations and other emblems of industrialisation that cloak cities in a cloud of grime once confined to the West.
About 92% of people live in places where air quality exceeds safe levels, reports the World Health Organisation (WHO). This leads to an estimated 6.5-million deaths each year, or 12% of the global total.
That is largely because the problem is worse in lowerincome countries, with big populations yet to make the advances in clean energy and transport that have transformed air quality in the US and Europe. It means that air pollution is still a bigger killer than HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis.
Public health experts say things are getting worse and the list of ways in which people die is long. Polluted air is linked to heart disease, strokes, lung cancer, acute respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
This does not necessarily make the growth in personal pollution monitors welcome. Some air quality specialists warn that the precision of devices may be questionable in many places.
“Provision of accurate, personal air quality information to the individual is within our grasp in some major cities such as London, where there is knowledge of air pollution at a relatively fine scale,” says Frank Kelly of King’s College London.
This is not the case in many parts of the developing world, where pollution monitoring is improving but patchy.
About 3,000 cities monitor air pollution, says the WHO, although that is up from about 1,600 two-and-a-half years ago. By far the best solution is tackling air pollution at its source. Cities and countries have to determine the main sources of pollution, says Carlos Dora, a public health policy expert at the WHO. Transport is a chief culprit.
“You have countries which still have two-stroke engine mopeds,” he says, referring to a type of small motorbike that burns petrol and diesel inefficiently and is prevalent across the developing world.
The EU still suffers high pollution from diesel vehicles that the authorities have encouraged because they produce less carbon dioxide, the main manmade greenhouse gas driving global warming.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
Dora says this points to one of the most important policies authorities can introduce to tackle air pollution: efficient public transport systems that reduce private vehicle use.
A prime example, he says, is the rapid bus transit system pioneered in Curitiba, Brazil, in the 1970s by Jaime Lerner, an architect and former mayor of the city. Instead of building an expensive subway, Lerner created dedicated bus lanes and bus stops with raised platforms that allowed people to board without stairs, a system so popular it was soon carrying thousands of people across the city.
“He is a hero,” says Dora. Cities across Latin America and beyond have used the idea.
Other steps cities can take include carving out more space for pedestrians and cyclists to reduce car use, and shutting down coal power stations anywhere near big populations.
Some places have different problems. In India and Africa, millions of people still burn kerosene for lighting, heating and cooking, creating healthendangering fumes.
Solar power is an increasingly cheap alternative for lighting and, in some places, cheap induction stoves are a healthy replacement.
Millions of people still use wood, charcoal and dung for indoor fires that are especially dangerous for the health of children under five. Replacing such fuels with cleaner gas would help, but progress in many countries has been slow.
Dora is hopeful that global air pollution will be improved as developing countries introduce the solutions wealthier nations have turned to.
China once had some of the most polluted cities in the world, but its efforts to tackle the problem are bearing fruit, he says.
India, home to some of the worst examples of polluted air, shows signs of following China’s example. Officials there are preparing a report following October’s extreme pollution when hundreds of schools had to be closed.
“I think we’re seeing the transition of India,” Dora says. “We will see the transition in Africa and other countries a bit later.” /Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2016(c)