Talk:Air pollution

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 January 2022 and 16 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Daniellesro (article contribs).

Graphics

If anybody wants to figure out the licensing involved...

[1] has some historical charts for various world cities.
The European Space Agency has world NO2 maps (terms of use, similar to Image:NO2 pollution europe hires.jpg)

A request for sources

Hello,

I would like to ask for refernces and sources of information confirming this statement: "The World Health Organization thinks that 4.6 million people die each year from causes directly attributable to air pollution", and this one: "Published in 2005 suggests that 310,000 Europeans die from air pollution annually". If you can just insert the exact link where these facts were taken from, it'll be really good. thanks! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.178.62.119 (talk) 09:36, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

Life expectancy improved significantly in sites where air pollutants were controlled. PMID 21666054

"[L]ife expectancy improved significantly in sites where air pollutants were controlled."

Review article:

Franchini M, Mannucci PM.

Thrombogenicity and cardiovascular effects of ambient air pollution.

PMID 21666054

Free full text http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/content/118/9/2405.long

Blood. 2011 Sep 1;118(9):2405-12. doi: 10.1182/blood-2011-04-343111. Epub 2011 Jun 10.

"[A] strong epidemiologic association is observed between acute and chronic exposures to particulate matter and the occurrence of cardiovascular events, coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease and venous thromboembolism, especially among older people and people with diabetes and previous cardiovascular conditions. ... Current knowledge on the biologic mechanisms and the clinical effect of short- and long-term exposure to particulate air pollutants is discussed, emphasizing that life expectancy improved significantly in sites where air pollutants were controlled.

Comment in

Linking air pollution exposure with thrombosis. [Blood. 2011]

http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/content/118/9/2636.long

Deaths from air pollution per 100,000 inhabitants (IHME, 2019) artwork

How do people feel about this artwork? I'm not sure how useful it is. I could be persuaded! My two initial concerns: 1) the person who redrew it chose the traffic signal colors (red, orange, green) rather than shades of the same color in the original. At a glance, this implies to me that much of the world is green and therefore clean, which is misleading. 2) I am not a great fan of this kind of map for graphing air pollution because different countries and continents suffer different pollution types. So from one country to another, we are not comparing like with like. We have wood fuel giving high death rates in Africa, but entirely different types of pollution (mostly I guess traffic particulates and no2) causing pollution deaths in Europe or North America. So what is the graph actually showing us? It seems grossly oversimplified to me, but maybe that's just me. 45154james (talk) 18:32, 18 January 2024 (UTC) (Edited slightly, adding one sentence to help clarify my concerns. 45154james (talk) 19:14, 18 January 2024 (UTC))[reply]

1) The choice of colors for "good" (green) and "bad" (red) is not ideal for some users. See H:Colorblind.

2) It needs a full citation instead of or in addition to "(IHME, 2019)" in the caption. The Wikimedia Commons page for this image has a link to the source, which leads to a website that has a suggested full citation that can be converted to the Wikipedia citation format.

3) The angled format for the legend is odd. --Spiffy sperry (talk) 19:21, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Population Health Capstone

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 15 January 2024 and 20 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Srevisu (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Srevisu (talk) 20:06, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: College Composition II

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 16 January 2024 and 11 May 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Oliviahowe07 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Lindseybean28 (talk) 21:25, 9 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Health claims and citations need revising per WP:MEDRS

A number of the health facts/claims/citations in Air Pollution really need revisiting so they satisfy WP:MEDRS. We should also aim to scrutinize newly added medical material the same way. It's not sufficient just to cite random, individual health studies claiming air pollution impacts, however good they might seem; I think we should be careful to follow WP:MEDRS with much more emphasis on systematic reviews, much more scepticism of (recent) primary sources, and so on. 45154james (talk) 11:39, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@45154james: I agree and have reverted a recent edit which added several non-MEDRS sources. Please be bold and remove any more which you don't think are appropriate. SmartSE (talk) 16:55, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! That was indeed the edit that prompted my comment - but there is quite a lot of historic material in the article that also needs scrutinizing. Big job! :/ 45154james (talk) 18:42, 29 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Article lengh

Hi User:dustfreeworld. Great to see you contributing.

Just wanted to make you aware that the article is overly long (over 12,000 words). I'm slowly cutting my deduplicating content (harm in harm sections f.i.), and removing undue stuff such as Boris Johnson and the details about fertility. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:52, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This includes dealing with over citation issues. It's not controversial to say that construction produces air pollution, I don't think. Why the many citations? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 07:55, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Em... That last edit was made to add ideas like “refurbishment” and “rehabilitation”. It seems to me that this two, together with construction, demolition, and renovation are all similar ideas. I’m glad that 45154james has combined some of them. Aside from the need to expand on those ideas (they are similar but seems not the same), currently the article lacks mentioning of Ultrafine particulate matter emitted from building activities from the mechanical working on building materials (e.g., wood, plastics, concrete/cement, etc.). As building activities can also involve fuel combustion and emissions of pollutants like NOx, that can be confusing. So, those sources are added to clarify these views and for future article expansion. Currently it’s only mentioned in a few words, all added by me, which is obviously not enough (UFP *is* very problematic, as said in the source the concentrations can rise up to thousands times of background levels during/after building activities. This definitely needs more mentions. It’s on my to-do list, but ... --Dustfreeworld (talk) 08:28, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the article is somewhat too long. May be all the content in section like this one can be moved to it’s own article with just one or two sentences left? --Dustfreeworld (talk) 08:40, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The issue around equity is quite important. I wouldn't like to demote the social science from this article really. For me, these sections can be summarized drastically:

Emissions factors
The initial sections of health (which have poor organisation, and have overlap with the sources section)
The fertility section (new article?)
The Johnson paragraphs.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 08:55, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know what Rehabilitation should refer to. The disambiguation page doens't list a related term as far as I can see. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 10:21, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Noted and thanks for the ping @Femke. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 08:10, 12 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]