Urban air - causes and consequences of urban air pollution

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Introduction
01 Cancer
02 Ozone
03 Urban air
04 Air pollutants
05 Blue-green algae
06 Water mutagens
07 Contamination
08 Chernobyl
09 Radon
10 Medical geology
11 Renal hazards
12 Organohalogens
13 Estrogens
14 Food hazards
15 Mycotoxins
16 Poisoning
17 Genetics
18 Risk

Ordering

(Excerpt from Chapter 3)

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Urban air

What goes up must come down. The photograph shown here provides a vivid visualization of air pollution. Smoke-stacks pouring forth black plumes, as shown in this recent photo, although no longer commonplace in cities in the United States and Europe, still occur throughout the world. As we shall discuss, one may fall victim to much less visible health hazards from the air we breathe, even in urban locals where air pollution control measures were first put in place nearly thirty years ago.

It was once thought that diluting whatever was put into the atmosphere would sufficiently ameliorate potential problems. Thus, early pollution controls increased the heights of smoke-stacks to allow winds to disperse the pollutants over wider areas. We now know that man can alter the very composition of the atmosphere by affecting the chemistry that produces our stratospheric ozone "shield". How can we sort out the influence of mankind's various inputs into the air and then concentrate on the topic of this chapter - urban air? As we shall see, it is reactive, short-lived chemical species that cause most of present-day urban air pollution and what is known as the problem of urban photochemical smog.

Air pollution was first perceived as a local problem in urban industrialized areas, hence taller smoke-stacks for industries and power plants were a ready solution. However, taller stacks merely transported the problem elsewhere and soon regional problems such as acid rain were recognized. For example, in Scandanavia, the acidification of lakes was found to result largely from industrial emissions of sulfur dioxide from tall stacks located in central European countries such as Germany and even in places as far off as Great Britain. Most recently, global problems such as climate change and stratospheric ozone depletion have been widely publicized. Obviously, laws and regulations to correct and control local, regional and global environmental threats require progressively more cooperation; starting from city ordinances, through state laws (or, in Europe, individual country statutes) and finally requiring full participation in international agreements. Unlike forest and mineral resources, the atmosphere is truly a shared resource that respects no man-made boundaries.

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Janet Arey received her B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cam bridge, Massachusetts, and her Ph.D. degree in Environmental Health Sciences from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. She has been a researcher at the Air Pollution Research Center at the University of California, Riverside since 1982. Her research interests include studies of the atmospheric chemistry of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and the formation of genotoxic species in the atmosphere. Since 1993 she has taught Introductory Atmospheric Science as an Environmental Science faculty member. Her graduate students participate in the Interdepartmental Program in Environmental Toxicology at U.C. Riverside.