Healthy Air: The Most Precious Gift For Our Children

Healthy air is essential for healthy living. However, can we be satisfied with the air quality in our houses, workplaces, buildings, cities and country as a whole? Well, I think it is high time we pay serious attention to our atmosphere.

- Dr. Inoka Suraweera

According to the World Health Organization, around 7 million deaths happen annually due to air pollution around the world. Children, adolescents and adults fall prey to this serious environmental risk factor and mind you, most of these are premature deaths.

Let us try to understand the health effects of air pollution. You might think air pollution is bad only for the lungs, however, that is far from the truth.

Industries, vehicles, households, burning of waste and biomass emit complex mixtures of air pollutants, many which are harmful to health. Among these pollutants, fine particulate matter (PM2.5, PM10) has the greatest effect on human health. Household air pollution is a significant issue in most developing countries including Sri Lanka, due to the use of unclean fuel for cooking purposes in poorly ventilated households.

Air pollution is associated with a range of acute and chronic illnesses. Headaches, wheezing, asthma and pneumonia are some of the acute health effects.

Air pollution is identified as a significant risk factor for noncommunicable diseases, which again is a serious health challenge world over as well as in Sri Lanka. Globally, air pollution is estimated to cause about 29% of lung cancer deaths, 43% of chronic Lung Disease deaths, around 25% of ischaemic heart disease deaths and 24% of stroke deaths. Air pollution has been observed as a risk factor for diabetes, adverse pregnancy outcomes such as low birth weight and prematurity too.

Certain groups are more vulnerable to the adverse health outcomes of air pollution. Children, pregnant women, people with existing chronic diseases (especially lung and heart diseases) and certain worker groups such as traffic police officers, construction workers etc. are among them.