Class 12th Maharashtra Board (HSC) EVS Project: Air Pollution

 CLASS 12th MAHARASHTRA BOARD (HSC) EVS PROJECT: AIR POLLUTION

SELECTION OF PROJECT TOPIC (INTRODUCTION):

Air pollution is the presence of substances in the atmosphere that are harmful to the health of humans and other living beings, or cause damage to the climate or to materials. There are different types of air pollutants, such as gases (such as ammonia, carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, methane and chlorofluorocarbons), particulates (both organic and inorganic), and biological molecules. Air pollution may cause diseases, allergies and even death to humans; it may also cause harm to other living organisms such as animals and food crops, and may damage the natural environment (for example, climate change, ozone depletion or habitat degradation) or built environment (for example, acid rain). Both human activity and natural processes can generate air pollution. Air pollution is a significant risk factor for a number of pollution-related diseases, including respiratory infections, heart disease, COPD, stroke and lung cancer.  The human health effects of poor air quality are far reaching, but principally affect the body's respiratory system and the cardiovascular system. Individual reactions to air pollutants depend on the type of pollutant a person is exposed to, the degree of exposure, and the individual's health status and genetics. Indoor air pollution and poor urban air quality are listed as two of the world's worst toxic pollution problems in the 2008 Blacksmith Institute World's Worst Polluted Places report. Outdoor air pollution alone causes 2.1 to 4.21 million deaths annually. Overall, air pollution causes the deaths of around 7 million people worldwide each year, and is the world's largest single environmental health risk. Productivity losses and degraded quality of life caused by air pollution are estimated to cost the world economy $5 trillion per year. Various pollution control technologies and strategies are available to reduce air pollution.  

IMPORTANCE OF THE TOPIC:

Air pollution inflicts a massive toll on the Indian economy. Its scale, complexity and urgency necessitate a strong, coherent and coordinated fiscal response by the government. However, recent relief and stimulus spending in response to the COVID-19 pandemic has crippled the Indian economy and led to a massive spike[10] in public debt. With limited room available for fiscal manoeuver, the government faces the massive challenge of financing measures to improve air quality. The imperative is to create a financial architecture that can mobilize private finance for clean-air solutions in India. Green sectors such as clean energy and e-mobility are likely to be the driving force for developing and implementing tangible solutions to improve air quality. An investment fund with a dedicated green focus could play an instrumental role in catalysing growth of such green industries and simultaneously addressing the twin problems of air pollution and climate change. A Green Super-Fund would combine a returns-driven strategy with the sustainability imperative and accelerate investment in green industries. The Triple Bottom-line framework, with an emphasis on profit, people and the planet, will be at the heart of the Super-Fund’s performance management strategy. It would raise capital from institutional investors such as multilateral organizations, sovereign wealth funds, and development financial institutes. Since 2014, more than 40 environmental startups have been set up in India with the singular goal of combatting the air pollution crisis. The Super-Fund would play a pivotal role in harnessing the economic and environmental potential of these startups and financing other high-impact ventures. There are several other channels through which the private sector can contribute to cleaner air and demonstrate that economic development and air pollution abatement are not mutually exclusive. 

OBJECTIVE OF PROJECT WORK:

To reduce the impacts of air pollution, both international and national legislation and regulation have been implemented to regulate air pollution. Local laws where well enforced in cities have lead to strong public health improvements. At the international level some of these efforts have been successful, for example the Montreal Protocol which successful at reducing release of harmful ozone depleting chemicals or 1985 Helsinki Protocol which reduced sulfur emissions, while other attempts have been less rapid in implementation, such as international action on climate change. To Setting up of a state-of-the-art advanced and integrated air pollution model system from hemispheric scale, European scale, and national scale, for calculation and assessment of high resolution (down to 1 km x 1 km resolution) air pollution levels and human exposure, including assessing the contribution related to different emission sectors and regions. This work is carried out in WP2. To Investigate the potential causal impact of individual chemical air pollutants as well as mixtures of air pollutants on health outcomes. In pursuing this aim, we utilize the unique Nordic population-based registers allowing linkage between historical residential address, air pollutants over decades and later health outcomes. By linking the exposure to health outcomes, new exposure-response relationships are determined of health effects for different population Groups To quantify the overall negative health outcomes of air pollution in terms of premature deaths, hospital admissions, days of reduced activity, respiratory diseases, mental disorders, etc. on high resolution down to 1 km x 1 km in the Nordic countries for the different population groups, using the integrated model system EVA, based on the impact pathway chain.

PROJECT WORK METHODOLOGY:

According to the WHO, air pollution is the fifth largest killer in India. There are a variety of ways in which the air pollution of an area can be measured. One of the ways is the measurement of particulate matter in air. Particulate matter is a mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets like acids, chemicals, gas, water, metals, soil dust particles, etc. These particles cause major health hazard in India. The changing temperature and slowing winds trap soot, dust and fine particulate matter. The particulate matter is present in a variety of sizes ranging from coarse, fine, to ultrafine.

According to the Ambient Air Pollution (AAP) report for the year 2018, Delhi had one of the highest pollution levels in the world. This result was based on the monitoring of PM measurement of outdoor air pollution from almost 1,600 cities in 91 countries. Last year, a public health emergency was declared in Delhi as pollution levels crossed 70 times the safe limit.

The methodology required for quantifying the health effects of air pollution is derived from the Health and Air Pollution in study, a joint initiative from the Health Research Council, the Ministry for the Environment and the Ministry of Transport (Fisher et al, 2007). This study represents the most comprehensive analysis of air pollution, its health implications, and the resulting societal costs conducted in New Zealand. The research evaluated the effects of specific source categories of emissions from vehicles (including private petrol cars, diesel cars, and diesel trucks), industry, domestic and total sources in New Zealand. 

The research encompassed five interconnected components: 

  air quality, meteorology and emissions data analysis 

  air pollution exposure assessment

  health impact assessment

  economic impact assessment 

  preventative policy assessment.   

Air quality is a measure of how clean or polluted the air is. Monitoring air quality is important because polluted air can be bad for our health— and the health of the environment. Air quality is measured with the Air Quality Index, or AQI. The AQI works sort of like a thermometer that runs from 0 to 500 degrees.

Basically, there are two general approaches to air pollution exposure assessment: 

(1) air monitoring, which depends on either direct measurements (personal monitors) or indirect measurements (fixed-site monitors combined with data on time-activity patterns), and

 (2) biological measurements that use biological markers.

WHO defines HIA as “a combination of procedures, methods and tools by which a policy, programe or project may be judged as to its potential effects on the health of a population, and the distribution of those effects within the population”.  

The purpose of an economic impact assessment is to estimate the changes in employment, income, and levels of business activity (typically measured by gross receipts or value added) that may result from a proposed project or program.

The Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981, aims to enable the “preservation of the quality of air and control of air pollution.” It was enacted to fulfil India's commitments at the 1972 United Nations environment conference

OBSERVATION:

Air pollution problems of a scale larger than the point monitoring problem lend themselves to space observational techniques. Examples of these large scale problems are those associated with changes in the global background of gases and aerosols; potential stratospheric pollution resulting from SST operations; regional sources, pollution episodes, and large scale diffusion; and effects of pollutants on climate. These problems are discussed and observational requirements are specified. Possible remote sensing techniques for satellite monitoring are described. These include monitoring of pollutant gases and particulates by means of their absorption and scattering of radiation in both the solar spectrum range and terrestrial emission spectrum range. A discussion of potential difficulties includes the atmospheric and surface background problems, the temperature sensitivity problem in the terrestrial spectrum range, the band overlap problem, and the cloud interference problem. Recent observations from satellites and balloons are reviewed. It appears that except for H2O, and, perhaps, O3 , measurements of the vertical profiles of atmospheric pollutant gases and aerosols from satellites will be extremely difficult. On the other hand, measurements of the total amounts (in a vertical column) of pollutant gases and aerosols do appear feasible.

ANALYSIS OF DATA:

Many studies suggest the quality of air has been significantly improving in the last years in the majority of the world regions. However, air quality still creates a significant problem in Europe, especially in some densely populated urban areas and during certain weather conditions. Several reports observe the serious impact of the air pollution on the people’s health and many analysis and models have been tested to understand and finally reduce the problem. The air pollution primarily results from: 

 Natural processes (soil erosion, volcano eruptions)

  Human activity,

 which includes three major sources:

 o Industry pollution 

o Traffic pollution (air exhaust, brake and tire wear, dust resuspension from roads, air and sea traffic) 

o House heating

 In addition to the increasing level of certain chemical compounds  (CO, SO2, NOx, BC, etc.) in the air, a dangerous type of pollution are small particles suspended in the atmosphere generated by a variety of human activities – Particulate Matter (PM) or Particulates. PM is a type of air pollution that can travel long distances in the atmosphere and causes a wide range of diseases and a significant reduction of life expectancy in most of the population of Europe There is a predictability to the narrative around North India’s air pollution. Air that is unhealthy all year-round becomes unbreathable during winter, largely due to particulate matter in emissions from farm fires in Punjab, Haryana, and Western Uttar Pradesh. This contributes to the portrayal of farmers as the primary architects of Delhi’s air pollution crisis, and short-term solutions sustain only till the skies clear up. There is no denying that the effects of seasonal paddy stubble burning are severe—it causes an estimated loss of 150,000 years of healthy life annually.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS:

Indoor environment is a complex issue in terms of toxicology and health risk assessment. There are many different types of pollutants which may give 11 rise to combined effects. The exposed population is the general public including vulnerable groups. 

 Many different factors influence air quality, e.g. ventilation, cleaning conditions, properties of buildings, products used in house-holds, cultural habits, climate, outdoor air etc. Thus, large variations in indoor environments can be expected across the EU. 

 The SCHER considers that the health risk assessment of the pollutants in indoor environments should be done according to the principles used in the EU for risk assessment of chemicals as this is an evidence based approach. Those principles should be applied on the data available and the specific features related to indoor environment taken into account. The risk assessment paradigm should be used flexibly, taking into account that complaints and diseases related to indoor exposures may have a complex cause-effect relationship. 

 The SCHER considers that the data base for indoor air risk assessment is in general limited. Frequently, there are more data available for risk assessment of “classical” indoor air pollutants such, as organic pollutants as compared to particles and microbes. Especially, more data on exposure, in quantitative terms, are required. Available dose-response data seldom cover vulnerable groups. 

 The SCHER has identified several gaps of knowledge, presented in answer to Question 2, which should be addressed by European-wide multidisciplinary research. As to single known compounds, SCHER considers carbon monoxide, formaldehyde, benzene, nitrogen oxides and naphthalene to be compounds of concern because they have caused adverse health effects as indoor pollutants or have a high potential to cause them.

 Environmental tobacco smoke, radon, lead and organophosphates are also of concern. For most other pollutants the data available are yet limited for risk assessment as indoor air pollutants.

 Consumer products, one source of chemicals in indoor environment, emit mostly volatile organic compounds. Lack of data on true exposure for emissions in consumer products has hampered evaluation of the associations with possible health effects most of which are also caused by other factors. The recent data suggest that some of the emitted products may react further in air and on surfaces producing secondary products, including fine and ultrafine particles. The health effects of those reaction products are poorly known. 

 Indoor air may contain over 900 chemicals, particles, and biological materials with potential health effects. Since their concentrations are usually higher than outdoors and people spend more time indoors than outdoors, the SCHER recommends that any studies to correlate outdoor air concentration with health effects need to consider the impact of indoor exposure. 

 The composition and concentrations of the different components in indoor air vary widely and are influenced by human activities. Since it is not feasible to regulate all possible scenarios, prevention from possible health effects and protection of sensitive populations is best achieved by reducing exposure. As a consequence the SCHER recommends that all relevant sources that are known to contribute should be evaluated. Such sources include tobacco smoke, any open fires including candles, building materials, furniture, pets and pests, use of household products, as well as conditions that lead to the growth of moulds. Constructers, maintenance personnel and inhabitants should also be aware that appropriate humidity avoids annoyances and sufficient air exchange reduces accumulation of pollutants.