Summary The Lancet Commission on pollution and health reported that pollution was responsible for 9 million premature deaths in 2015, making it the world's largest environmental risk factor for disease and premature death. We have now updated this estimate using data from the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuriaes, and Risk Factors Study 2019. We find that pollution remains responsible for approximately 9 million deaths per year, corresponding to one in six deaths worldwide. Reductions have occurred in the number of deaths attributable to the types of pollution associated with extreme poverty. However, these reductions in deaths from household air pollution and water pollution are offset by increased deaths attributable to ambient air pollution and toxic chemical pollution (ie, lead). Deaths from these modern pollution risk factors, which are the unintended consequence of industrialisation and urbanisation, have risen by 7% since 2015 and by over 66% since 2000. Despite ongoing efforts by UN agencies, committed groups, committed individuals, and some national governments (mostly in high-income countries), little real progress against pollution can be identified overall, particularly in the low-income and middle-income countries, where pollution is most severe. Urgent attention is needed to control pollution and prevent pollution-related disease, with an emphasis on air pollution and lead poisoning, and a stronger focus on hazardous chemical pollution. Pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss are closely linked. Successful control of these conjoined threats requires a globally supported, formal science–policy interface to inform intervention, influence research, and guide funding. Pollution has typically been viewed as a local issue to be addressed through subnational and national regulation or, occasionally, using regional policy in higher-income countries. Now, however, it is increasingly clear that pollution is a planetary threat, and that its drivers, its dispersion, and its effects on health transcend local boundaries and demand a global response. Global action on all major modern pollutants is needed. Global efforts can synergise with other global environmental policy programmes, especially as a large-scale, rapid transition away from all fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy is an effective strategy for preventing pollution while also slowing down climate change, and thus achieves a double benefit for planetary health.
Richard C. Thompson, W. Courtene-Jones, Julien Boucher
et al.
Twenty years after the first publication that used the term microplastic, we review current understanding, refine definitions, and consider future prospects. Microplastics arise from multiple sources, including tires, textiles, cosmetics, paint, and the fragmentation of larger items. They are widely distributed throughout the natural environment, with evidence of harm at multiple levels of biological organization. They are pervasive in food and drink and have been detected throughout the human body, with emerging evidence of negative effects. Environmental contamination could double by 2040, and wide-scale harm has been predicted. Public concern is increasing, and diverse measures to address microplastic pollution are being considered in international negotiations. Clear evidence on the efficacy of potential solutions is now needed to address the issue and to minimize the risks of unintended consequences. Editor’s summary Twenty years after the term “microplastics” was first used, what do we know about their presence in the environment? Thompson et al. review what we have learned over that interval, including what microplastics are, their sources and sinks, their ecological impacts and risks, the dangers they pose to human health, advances in detection and identification, and prospects for managing and regulating them. The environmental burden of microplastics continues to grow, so a combination of scientific, economic, and social interventions will be necessary to curb that growth. —Jesse Smith BACKGROUND The term microplastic was first used to describe microscopic fragments of plastic debris (~20 µm in diameter) in a publication in 2004. On the basis of this paper and earlier work, it was evident that small fragments of various common plastics—including acrylic, polyamine (nylon), polypropylene, polyester, polyethylene, and polystyrene—were present in coastal environments around the United Kingdom and along the eastern seaboard of the United States and that their abundance had increased substantially since the 1960s. There was evidence that microplastics were bioavailable to invertebrates and fish but only speculation on the key sources and the potential for harmful effects. ADVANCES Microplastics, now widely defined as pieces ≤5 mm in size, are recognized as a highly diverse set of globally important contaminants. Multiple sources are now confirmed, including primary microplastics in cosmetics and paint as well as the pellets and flakes used to make plastic products, along with secondary microplastics generated by the abrasion of larger items during use, including textiles and tires, and the fragmentation of larger debris in the environment. Microplastics can be redistributed by wind and water and have since been reported in diverse locations, from the sea surface to deep-sea sediments, from farmland to our highest mountains, and in sea ice, lakes, and rivers. They have been detected in 1300 aquatic and terrestrial species, from invertebrates at the base of the food web to apex predators, with evidence of impacts at all levels of biological organization, from cellular to ecosystem. Microplastics are pervasive in the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe. They have been detected in multiple tissues and organs of the human body, with emerging evidence of potential effects. This rapidly unfolding scientific evidence, together with individual, social, and societal drivers of change, is leading to policy outcomes that include national-level regulations, such as the prohibition of microplastics in cosmetics by multiple countries and a mandate in France requiring that filters be installed in washing machines to intercept microfibers, as well as multinational policies, including the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive and the REACH (Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals) legislation on intentionally added microplastics. OUTLOOK Emissions of microplastics to the environment are estimated to be between 10 and 40 million tonnes per year, and under business-as-usual scenarios, this amount could double by 2040. Even if it were possible to immediately halt emissions, quantities would continue to increase because of the fragmentation of legacy items. Modeling predictions indicate the potential for wide-scale environmental harm within 70 to 100 years, but detailed risk assessments are limited because exposure and effect data are incomplete. This is especially true for human health effects. Although we anticipate greater clarity over the next few years, public risk perception is also a key driver of actions and is often influenced by a wider range of factors than objective risk assessment; for example, German consumers recently rated microplastics in food as being their top environmental health concern. Can we afford the externalized costs of microplastics that are already understood, and if not, which criteria should guide interventions and what is essential, in the context of societal needs and desires? A whole-system approach from extraction to remediation will be key to creating material flows that satisfy human needs with minimal environmental impact. Twenty years of science defining microplastic pollution now brings a tangible opportunity for international action as part of the United Nations Environment Programme draft global plastics treaty. Together with reductions in primary polymer production, measures will be needed to reduce emissions and pollution along the entire life cycle of plastics, including dedicated provisions on microplastics. However, there is a high risk of unintended consequences if interventions are implemented without appropriate evaluation. Microplastic pollution: Sources, impacts, and actions. Twenty years of research focused on microplastic pollution has identified their multiple sources, wide-scale environmental distribution, bioavailability, and impacts. This evidence, together with the associated sociopolitical dynamics, has started to drive actions on a global scale. NGOs, nongovernmental organizations. ILLUSTRATION: J. BEADON
Although air pollution is well known to be harmful to the lung and airways, it can also damage most other organ systems of the body. It is estimated that about 500,000 lung cancer deaths and 1.6 million COPD deaths can be attributed to air pollution, but air pollution may also account for 19% of all cardiovascular deaths and 21% of all stroke deaths. Air pollution has been linked to other malignancies, such as bladder cancer and childhood leukemia. Lung development in childhood is stymied with exposure to air pollutants, and poor lung development in children predicts lung impairment in adults. Air pollution is associated with reduced cognitive function and increased risk of dementia. Particulate matter in the air (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter < 2.5 μm) is associated with delayed psychomotor development and lower child intelligence. Studies link air pollution with diabetes mellitus prevalence, morbidity, and mortality. Pollution affects the immune system and is associated with allergic rhinitis, allergic sensitization, and autoimmunity. It is also associated with osteoporosis and bone fractures, conjunctivitis, dry eye disease, blepharitis, inflammatory bowel disease, increased intravascular coagulation, and decreased glomerular filtration rate. Atopic and urticarial skin disease, acne, and skin aging are linked to air pollution. Air pollution is controllable and, therefore, many of these adverse health effects can be prevented.
Abstract Several recent studies have identified inverted-U relationships between pollution and economic development. We investigate this question using a cross-national panel of data on emissions of four important air pollutants: suspended particulate matter, sulfur dioxide, oxides of nitrogen, and carbon monoxide. We find that per capita emissions of all four pollutants exhibit inverted-U relationships with per capita GDP. While this suggests that emissions will decrease in the very long run, we forecast continued rapid growth in global emissions over the next several decades.
The grassroots movement that placed environmental justice issues on the national stage around 1980 was soon followed up by research documenting the correlation between pollution and race and poverty. This work has established inequitable exposure to nuisances as a stylized fact of social science. In this paper, we review the environmental justice literature, especially where it intersects with work by economists. First we consider the literature documenting evidence of disproportionate exposure. We particularly consider the implications of modeling choices about spatial relationships between polluters and residents, and about conditioning variables. Next, we evaluate the theory and evidence for four possible mechanisms that may lie behind the patterns seen: disproportionate siting on the firm side, “coming to the nuisance” on the household side, market-like coordination of the two, and discriminatory politics and/or enforcement. We argue that further research is needed to understand how much weight to give each mechanism. Finally, we discuss some policy options.
Air pollution poses a great environmental risk to health. Outdoor fine particulate matter (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter 103 million disability-adjusted life years lost according to the Global Burden of Disease Report. The World Health Organization attributes 3.8 million additional deaths to indoor air pollution. Air pollution can harm acutely, usually manifested by respiratory or cardiac symptoms, as well as chronically, potentially affecting every organ in the body. It can cause, complicate, or exacerbate many adverse health conditions. Tissue damage may result directly from pollutant toxicity because fine and ultrafine particles can gain access to organs, or indirectly through systemic inflammatory processes. Susceptibility is partly under genetic and epigenetic regulation. Although air pollution affects people of all regions, ages, and social groups, it is likely to cause greater illness in those with heavy exposure and greater susceptibility. Persons are more vulnerable to air pollution if they have other illnesses or less social support. Harmful effects occur on a continuum of dosage and even at levels below air quality standards previously considered to be safe.
In past decades, the industrial and technological developments have increased exponentially and accompanied by non-judicial and un-sustainable utilization of non-renewable resources. At the same time, the environmental branch of toxicology has gained significant attention in understanding the effect of toxic chemicals on human health. Environmental toxic agents cause several diseases, particularly high risk among children, pregnant women, geriatrics and clinical patients. Since air pollution affects human health and results in increased morbidity and mortality increased the toxicological studies focusing on industrial air pollution absorbed by the common people. Therefore, it is needed to design an automated Environmental Toxicology based Air Pollution Monitoring System. To resolve the limitations of traditional monitoring system and to reduce the overall cost, this paper designs an IoT enabled Environmental Toxicology for Air Pollution Monitoring using Artificial Intelligence technique (ETAPM-AIT) to improve human health. The proposed ETAPM-AIT model includes a set of IoT based sensor array to sense eight pollutants namely NH3, CO, NO2, CH4, CO2, PM2.5, temperature and humidity. The sensor array measures the pollutant level and transmits it to the cloud server via gateways for analytic process. The proposed model aims to report the status of air quality in real time by using cloud server and sends an alarm in the presence of hazardous pollutants level in the air. For the classification of air pollutants and determining air quality, Artificial Algae Algorithm (AAA) based Elman Neural Network (ENN) model is used as a classifier, which predicts the air quality in the forthcoming time stamps. The AAA is applied as a parameter tuning technique to optimally determine the parameter values of the ENN model. In-order to examine the air quality monitoring performance of the proposed ETAPM-AIT model, an extensive set of simulation analysis is performed and the results are inspected in 5, 15, 30 and 60 min of duration respectively. The experimental outcome highlights the optimal performance of the proposed ETAPM-AIT model over the recent techniques.
To achieve the win-win goal of fostering economic development and inhibiting haze pollution in China, environmental information disclosure has been given more and more attention for its role of promoting green technology innovation. Utilizing a panel data of 113 prefecture and above cities from 2008 to 2018, this thesis first provides an empirical evidence for the strategic interaction of environmental information disclosure in China, verifies the coexistence of "race to the bottom" and "race to the top", and finds that the intensity of "race to the bottom" is stronger than that of "race to the top". Then, this thesis employs an empirical analysis on the mediating role of green technology innovation between environmental information disclosure and economic development and haze pollution from the perspective of static, dynamic, and even dynamic spatial perspectives. The results show that green technology innovation partly mediates the promotion effect of environmental information disclosure on economic development and the inhibition effect of environmental information disclosure on haze pollution under the static situation. In addition, green technology innovation fully mediates the promotion effect of environmental information disclosure on economic development but partly mediates the inhibition effect of environmental information disclosure on haze pollution under the dynamic situation. Furthermore, with the consideration of dynamic and spatial spillover effects of dependent variables such as economic development and haze pollution simultaneously, the mediation roles of green technology innovation between environmental information disclosure and economic development and haze pollution are both not supported, while the inhibition effect of green technology innovation on haze pollution is still established. The results not only identify the strategic interaction of environmental information disclosure and reveal the effectiveness of the mediating role of green technology innovation between environmental information disclosure and economic development and environmental pollution under the static and dynamic situations, but also provide a theoretical framework for green, sustainable, and high-quality development in China.
Extensive studies have been carried out on the impact of human activities on air pollution, but systematic investigation on the relationship between air pollutant and meteorological conditions is still insufficient, especially in the context of China’s site scale and recent comprehensive environmental pollution control. Here, we used a spatial interpolation technology to establish a set of data sets of pollutants and meteorological elements that are spatially matched at 896 stations in China to reveal the air pollutant-meteorological interactions between 2014 and 2019. We found that air pollution and meteorological elements have obvious seasonal and regional characteristics. Over the last few years, the concentration of most air pollutants in China has dropped significantly except for O3. The increase in O3 concentration was closely related to the decrease of particulate matter and NO2 concentration. The concentration of most air pollutants was affected by meteorological conditions, but the level of impact depended on the type of pollutants and varied across regions. The concentration of air pollutants at most stations was significantly negatively correlated with wind speed, precipitation and relative humidity, but positively correlated with atmospheric pressure. As the latitude increases, the impact of temperature on the concentration of air pollutants becomes more obvious. To effectively control air pollution, it is further urgent to reveal the relationship between air pollution and meteorological conditions based on long-term daily or real-time data.
Nowadays, plastic pollution is considered an issue of global concern. This environmental problem results from human industrial and domestic activities, associated with poor management, from manufacturing processes to products' end life. In this perspective, human consumption and management of daily used plastic materials can play a determinant role to control this environmental issue. Thus, understanding public perceptions about plastic pollution may be a valuable resource to engage society in solutions to reduce its environmental release. In this study, perceptions about plastic pollution, its impacts as well as sociodemographic and psychological factors predicting individuals' pro-environmental behaviours were analysed, in the Portuguese context. Overall, results showed that there is a general knowledge that plastics degrade in the environment. The participants of the study perceived the bio-ecological impacts of plastics as a greater threat than the socioeconomic impacts. A hierarchical regression analyses revealed that sociodemographic variables and those related to knowledge and perceived impacts about plastic pollution can predict participants' pro-environmental behaviours. Awareness about the impacts of plastic pollution (socioeconomic, health impacts and bio-ecological impacts) were highly associated to pro-environmental behaviour. This study data can help to understand how to enhance pro-environmental behaviours and contribute to decrease the presence of micro(nano)plastics in the environment.
Abstract Pollution transfer is widespread in various countries. If differences in environmental regulation intensity exist across different regions in a country, pollution transfer may occur. Based on data from Chinese enterprises, this study constructs a comprehensive index of environmental regulation and the degree of environmental co-governance at the enterprise level and uses a panel probit model, the two-stage least squares method, and an interaction regression model to assess the effect of environmental regulation and environmental co-governance on pollution transfer. The probability of enterprise migration increases as environmental regulation intensity increases, confirming the pollution transfer effect of environmental regulation. The analysis of the influencing mechanism shows that environmental regulation can reduce the probability of pollution transfer through the “innovation compensation effect” and improve the probability of enterprise migration through the “compliance cost effect”. In addition, under the condition of established environmental regulation, environmental co-governance can reduce the probability of enterprise migration, inhibit the transfer of pollution to nearby areas, and improve the efficiency of environmental governance. This study is conducive to assessing the policy effectiveness of environmental regulation and provides a reference for other countries regarding pollution transfer.
ABSTRACT Bacterial infection‐induced acute sinusitis is prevalent and can easily progress into chronic sinusitis, which is often difficult to treat due to the challenging nature of the site, increased environmental pollution, and bacterial drug resistance prevalent nowadays. To address these challenges, a flexible hydrogel (LM@P/S@CP@Hemin) that involves flexible wood‐modified logs, photoactive conjugated polymers, an immunomodulator, and an immobilization hydrogel was prepared for nasal cavity treatment. The flexible wood‐modified logs provide mechanical strength support. In vitro, experiments verified that the hydrogel could efficiently induce the photothermal effect under near‐infrared‐II laser irradiation after deeply penetrating bone and produce reactive oxygen species (ROS) to initiate the photodynamic effect for synergetically eliminating bacteria. The introduction of hemin endows LM@P/S@CP@Hemin hydrogel with a strong immunomodulatory effect on macrophages to achieve anti‐inflammation and cellular ROS clearance abilities, which avoids the excessive oxidative stress in the nasal cavity. The results showed that the hydrogel induced an anti‐bacterial effect with a 98.5% inhibition rate against methicillin‐resistant Staphylococcus aureus, hadexcellent clearance ability of excessive ROS, and promoted anti‐inflammatory M2 macrophage generation to relieve inflammation. Meanwhile, transcriptome sequencing and mRNA level measurements revealed that the hydrogel could regulate inflammatory‐related genes. In vivo, bacterial infection‐induced acute sinusitis rabbit model experiments and histological analysis further confirmed the great therapeutic effect of LM@P/S@CP@Hemin for acute sinusitis based on photothermal and photodynamic therapy. Therefore, LM@P/S@CP@Hemin is an excellent therapeutic material that can adapt to the nasal environment and treat acute sinusitis.
Seyed Amir Hossein Alavi, Kambiz Shahroudi, Mohammad Doostar
et al.
This study aims to design a model for the relationships between the indices of a creative city and creative economy development in the creative city of Rasht, Guilan Province, Iran. In this research, the grounded theory was employed to conduct a qualitative analysis, and semi-structured interviews were carried out for data collection. For this purpose, eight interviews were given to senior and middle-ranking city managers on the research topic. Based on Strauss and Corbin’s systematic approach, a model was proposed for the relationships between the indices of a creative city and creative economy development through open coding, axial coding, and selective coding. The results of coding the interviews indicated that the creative economy was the axial category in the model. Creative economy development included eight components with different weights, among which “creative industries” and “creative citizens” had pivotal roles. According to the experts, different factors such as the characteristics of a creative city affect creative economy development, and urban management is considered to play a key role in this process.