Urban concentrations are heavy air polluters, and massive urbanization will bring an already critical situation to crisis if no stronger internationally coordinated action is taken. From air pollution detection in the city, to reduction of emissions of pollutants and protection against pollution induced diseases, scientific and technological progress in the life sciences area have a role to play in this collective effort.
Air pollution is a major environmental and health problem affecting both developed and developing countries. Developing nations are increasingly exposed to it as a result of population growth and industrialization unconstrained by appropriate regulations, while developed ones are slow in adopting protective measures. A global concern with primary incidence on urban concentrations, air pollution constitutes a real threat on the future of humanity in the perspective of its massive urbanization. City air pollution affects both ambient air quality and indoors air quality, including that of private homes and workplaces. It is therefore crucial to find solutions to significantly decrease emissions of common air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and dioxide, nitrogen oxides, ozone and particulate matters in order to reduce their impact on morbidity and mortality.
All sources of air pollution must be addressed. Transportation and industry play a major role in outdoor pollution. But indoors pollution also constitutes an important source of exposure for perhaps billions of people, mostly women and children regularly confronted with levels of pollution exceeding up to 100 times WHO guidelines. Cooking and heating with solid fuels, such as wood, coal, charcoal etc., still is a daily reality for over half of the world's population, and put people in contact with health threatening particulate matters. In high resource countries more and more people are also being exposed to organic volatile compounds emitted by building materials.
Not only does air pollution represent a major danger for human health, it is also closely related to the issue of climate change. Particulate matters and aerosols, mostly generated by the transport and industry sectors, interfere with climate parameters, so that rapid urban growth can be correlated in certain parts of the world with deficits of rain precipitations during the dry season.
To modify the trends of pollutant emissions, a variety of measures are being implemented in the different countries following WHO, EPA or EC recommendations; but the rate of progress is too slow for substantially improving the situation, and many crucial areas of the world do not comply with those rules.
How can the fight against city air pollution be made more efficient at the world level? What are the indispensable technological breakthroughs to win the race against the polluting dangers of massive urbanization? What can life sciences and technologies already propose in terms of pollutants detection, emission and protection? What should they make available in the near future? What incentives could speed up research in both the public and the private sectors? How can developing countries avoid repeating the past mistakes of developed ones?