THE IMPACT OF AIR POLLUTION ON URBAN HEALTH: ASSESSING LONG-TERM EFFECTS AND MITIGATION STRATEGIES

Abstract

The contamination of the surroundings in cities poses significant health risks that mostly impair respiratory organs and the heart. Those who resided in areas where there were high rates of air pollution had 26% quicker deaths compared to people who resided in areas with low prevalence of pollution. The study notes that there is a dire need to have professional air quality management systems to protect the health of the individuals. The different global mitigation efforts have recorded varying degrees of success in their undertaking. The growth of the Ultra Low Emission Zone within London created significant effects of reduction in harmful pollutants that especially benefited underprivileged community localities. The system of policies fines the vehicles that fail to meet the standards with day-to-day fees as a means of reducing the numbers of vehicles with high emissions on the road. The Paris city had a better air quality due to significant road limit speed restriction in their urban area. This illustrates that selective policy-making can result in measurable effects of airborne pollution reduction and improved wellness of the population. There is successful adoption of pollution control strategies but there are various obstacles that still intervene with its implementation. The economic costs associated with the use of clean technology pose a challenge to complete implementation of such technology as it may be costly. Political and regulatory systems are the biggest obstacles to the implementation of regulations on air pollution since stakeholders have varying priorities and interests. Air pollution mitigation needs the additional research investments into the technological advancements as the existing monitoring and reducing technologies are still underdeveloped. These challenges should be resolved using various elements which incorporate both financial incentives and high quality and technological advancement to attain improvements in the air quality conditions over a long period of time.