The Tricky Balancing Act Behind Air Pollution Control

The Dark Truth Behind Air Quality Standards
Source: Alice Sundbom/ EyeEm

Beside the energy dilemma due to coal burning being the cheapest energy generating option (discussed in my previous post), there are many other factors  that are complicating efforts in air pollution control such as the legislation of air quality standards. 

Air quality standards are important measures that are established to ensure that air pollutant concentrations do not exceed to levels that will greatly harm the public health. It is known that air quality standards vary across the world even though most governments follow the same World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines when setting their own national standards. The WHO air quality guidelines are based on the latest scientific evidence of air pollutants and their health consequences. However, these research is not sufficient to determine the exact thresholds of air pollutants such that adverse health effects will not occur, especially due to the fact that everyone has different sensitivities to air pollution. For instance, children and  the elderly are significantly more vulnerable to air pollution. Thus, it is even stressed by the WHO that the guideline values provided cannot be implied to fully protect human health. 

In the ideal scenario, there should be zero air pollutants in our atmosphere to ensure maximum protection of the population's public health. However, economical growth plays an indispensable role in today's world and emission of air pollutants from these economical activities can be regarded as a necessary evil. Therefore, it can be implied that the air quality standards represent the level of tolerable risk that the country is willing to accept to balance its economical growth or development of the country with public health risk. Other important factors, which influence the level of air quality standard, include technological feasibility and level of development of the country that will directly determine the country's capability in meeting these air quality standards.

A recent article has suggested that even the current European Union (EU) air pollution target may still be too high for human health, drawing the need to  continuously revise current air quality standards. The article also highlighted an important fact that even if a certain level of risk from air pollution can be deemed acceptable, the risks to individuals within the population can never be equally distributed. For example, it mentioned that communities that are located nearer to major sources of air pollution such as living next to a busy road can have a much higher risk due to the long-term exposure to the hazardous air pollutants. Therefore, it is vital for policymakers to pay attention to the difference in sensitivities and distribution of risk when establishing comprehensive air quality standards to safeguard the public health. It is truly a tricky balancing act to determine air quality standards in air pollution legislation.