Ambient air pollution

Abstract

Air pollution has emerged as a serious health emergency both locally and globally. The same air pollutants that cause illnesses and premature deaths also trap heat and cause global warming, interfere with rainfall and accelerate icecap and glacier melting, affect vegetation and ecosystems, and also have trans-boundary effects. This complex set of effects poses a serious challenge for public policy. While policy action itself has to gather momentum to meet the clean air targets across cities and regions to protect public health, policy action will also have to respond more holistically to a range of scientific evidence that has now established more a complex link between air pollution and several other environmental and climate impacts. But this is also an opportunity to adopt policy indicators that can be mainstreamed across sectors to align a full range of interventions for effective mitigation and achieve multiple co-benefits related to health and climate security and sustainable development goals. Keywords: Government, intervention, challenges, nutrition, maternal, mortality, resources