The first general alarm about the lethal effects of community air pollution was sounded in London in December 1952 during a severe fog episode that shut the city down and flooded hospitals and morgues. Subsequent media discussions about the benefits of cleaner air often cite the World Health Organization's global estimate of 7 million air pollution-related deaths annually (about 12% of the total), primarily based on studies of long-term mortality differences among US cities during previous decades. More recent publications have focused on short-term temporal associations. So how do long- and short-term analyses relate?
harms of air pollution
PM2.5 designates a near-ubiquitous air-polluting particle that frequently appears in the scientific literature as well as popular press news items. But few of us really know what they are talking about, mainly because it is just one characteristic of a complex category.
It’s been 50 years since cleaning up the air in the United States began in earnest. Skies are much clearer now than in the mid-20th century. Leaded gasoline is gone, power plants have been abandoning coal and sulfur dioxide has dropped by 91%. Despite these growing improvements, why have epidemiologists been unable to show the demonstrable public health benefits that their computer models predict?