Author: toxicexpertise

Thomas Verbeek and Calvin Jephcote, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick Air pollution is increasingly seen as a major public health issue, with new research outputs covered by international organisations and the national media every few weeks. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that “clean air is a basic requirement of human health and well-being”. … Continue reading Editorial: Measuring and monitoring in complex times – the case of air pollution

Emma Garnett, Research Fellow in the School for Population Health and Environmental Sciences, King’s College London Contact:  emma.garnett@kcl.ac.uk / twitter: @emmargarnett Introduction Particle pollution in the air is a mixture of solids and liquid droplets. Comprised of particles of different sizes, air borne particulate matter (PM) includes ash and dust emitted by anthropogenic and non-anthropogenic … Continue reading The elemental ambiguity of PM2.5

Nicola da Schio (Cosmopolis, VUB) with Arnaud Dubois, Cécile Herr, Katia Xenophontos, Lorenzo Glorie, Matthieu Coulonval. Pictures: ©FrancoisCorbiau & Aircasting.org We are thankful to Kobe Boussauw, Evi Dons, and Anna Plyushteva for their useful suggestions. Background Air pollution was already discussed by an earlier post of Toxic News. By looking at the examples of Ghent … Continue reading L’air d’un Bruxellois: self-portraits of personal exposure to air pollution

Samuel Agyei-Mensah  a, Ayaga A. Bawah b, Elvis Kyere Gyeabour  a   a Department of Geography and Resource Development, University of Ghana b Regional Institute for Population Studies, University of Ghana INTRODUCTION There has been an increasing concern about the state of air quality in many cities of the developing world, especially within an African … Continue reading Challenges of monitoring and developing environmental policy in Sub-Saharan Africa: the case of air pollution and biofuels in Ghana

Dr Calvin Jephcote | Toxic Expertise Research Fellow | University of Warwick, UK Approximately 33% of European citizens are exposed to air pollutant levels that exceed EU air quality standards, and 90% of urban residents experience levels of air pollution which the World Health Organisation consider as damaging to health. Particles below 10μm in aerodynamic … Continue reading Post-Industrial structures of Environmental Injustice within Western Europe

Heike Köckler, Department of Community Health, Hochschule für Gesundheit, Bochum, Germany Johannes Flacke, ITC, University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands A lot is known about environmental quality in cities and its health effects: noise causes sleep problems and has effects on blood pressure, toxic air emissions may cause lung disease and walkable neighborhoods invite everyday … Continue reading Decisions for a healthy and just city

Jon Fairburn, Professor of Sustainable Development, Staffordshire University, UK Jon.fairburn@staffs.ac.uk Here are some of the biggest ongoing projects which have a wealth of data and reports covering environment, health and equity issues. EuroHealthy is a recently completed Horizon 2020 project, which sought to develop policies that promote health equity across European metropolitan areas. Briefing notes … Continue reading Emerging environmental health data sources