Rapid rise in premature mortality due to anthropogenic air pollution in fast-growing tropical cities from 2005 to 2018.

ABSTRACT: Tropical cities are experiencing rapid growth but lack routine air pollution monitoring to develop prescient air quality policies. Here, we conduct targeted sampling of recent (2000s to 2010s) observations of air pollutants from space-based instruments over 46 fast-growing tropical cities. We quantify significant annual increases in nitrogen dioxide (NO₂) (1 to 14%), ammonia (2 to 12%), and reactive volatile organic compounds (1 to 11%) in most cities, driven almost exclusively by emerging anthropogenic sources rather than traditional biomass burning. We estimate annual increases in urban population exposure to air pollutants of 1 to 18% for fine particles (PM_2.5) and 2 to 23% for NO₂ from 2005 to 2018 and attribute 180,000 (95% confidence interval: -230,00

SUBMITTER: Vohra K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8993110 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature