The Correlation Between Air Pollution and Human Health

ABSTRACT

The hypothesis of this project is that compare to water contamination, noise, waste disposal and the speed of urbanization, aerosol pollution is the greatest enemy of human health at urban area in China. Specifically, this research project has mentioned the actuality state and seriousness of air pollution in China. In recent years, not much research concern about the effect of burning fireworks, this research project has try to find out the correlation between human health and burning firework.

The heath effect caused by smoking and automobile exhaust has been worked out in this research project. The method used in this research project is based secondary quantitative method, some statistical formula has been used to calculate the result. The results from analysis shows that, in Beijing, because of the rapid increase of private vehicles, automobile exhaust emissions has becoming one of the most important sources of air pollution. This brings many illnesses to human, and the natural environment has been damaged by automobile exhaust as well. Secondly, consider about indoor air pollution, the results shows smoking is the largest source of indoor air pollution, the extent of PM10 and PM2.5 in smoking area is about 25 times more than in non - smoking area. Therefore, by looking at automobile exhaust in outdoor and smoking in indoor, the conclusion is very clear that is air pollution is the most significant factor which affecting human health.

1. Introduction

One of the most common dilemmas facing Chinese people from the earlier of 19th centuries has been the question of whether or not that our cities are healthy for living and how can we make our living environment better. Tie and Cao (2009) indicated that total energy consumption in 2002 was three times more than in 1973. In addition, According to Jiang et al (2009), consumption of large quantities of natural raw materials such as fossil fuel, gas and coal will cause serious air and water pollution. Stand to reason, with standing increased extent of pollution in China, this issue will come to the first priority problem need to be solved by Chinese government in 21st century. However, by reading the literature, I hound a problem, that is, in the last 10 years, very few study has focused on the air pollution caused by burning firework, and the potential dangers to human health caused by burning firework. Therefore, this research will try to work out the correlations between burning firework and human health.

It is obvious, in modern society, stay healthy is very important to every single person from an infant to 90 years old senior citizens. A good and healthy body is a fundamental term of all human activities. However, the increasing pollution brings many diseases such as dyspnoea, cardiovascular disease and lung cancer (Gallagher et al. 2010). Therefore, it is very important for both the government and the public pay attention to pollution control immediately.

It is hoped that these findings will help both the public and the Chinese government to carefully consider the importance of living environment. This information could then be used by the environmentalist to evaluate the average level of human health.

Before reading the following sections, It is very important to know and understand the definition of pollution and air pollution. Refers to (Zaim 2004), pollution is environmental degradation caused by a variety of social activities of human, and the phenomenon of harmful to humans and other organisms for survival and development.

Londonair (2009) has pointed out that air pollution is a substances in the atmosphere which is harmful to human health and surrounding environment and it is mainly caused by human activities such as vehicle emissions, industrial emissions and smoking. It has also highlighted that aerosol pollutant is including CO, CO2, NO2, O3, PM10, PM2.5 and SO2. Each of the pollutant has different sources, for example, CO2 is mainly come from burning petroleum and PM10, PM2.5 is mainly caused by dust storm.

Although, in China, there are many environmental reasons affect to people's health in urban area such as exhaust emission, sewage disposal, acoustic treatment and the garbage disposal, the hypothesis of this project is that compared with other types of environmental pollution, the most significant problem is air pollution.

The scope of this project is, firstly, to provide a comprehensive recent researches related to the topic. Followed by some existing methodologies that used in those literatures and mention some limitation during the process of writing this project, most important thing is to illustrate my own set of whole new experiment which is based on the existing data that have been collected from the literatures. All the mathematical calculation process relates to my experiment will be available on the appendices. The result and the analysis is based on the calculation and will be delivered in findings and discussion section.

2. Literature review

Although, in China, there are many environmental reasons affect to people's health in urban area such as exhaust emission, sewage disposal, acoustic treatment and the garbage disposal, in the point of my view, the most significant problem is air pollution. This literature review will mainly discuss how air pollution affects human health, and give examples of major sources of atmospheric pollution. It will also mention a little of water pollution and noise in order to show that in China, air pollution is the most dangerous form of pollutions. After that, aiming to locate the subject area which has not been serious considered. The hypothesis of this project is to demonstrate that air pollution is most serious pollution in China comparing with other type of pollution.

Clean air is essential material and basis for survival that people rely on. Human health and living environment are closely related, and that modern people are concerned about it (Zeng et al, 2010). In recent years, with the continued growth of pollution in China, a lot of published researches and studies have showed contaminants endanger life. For example, Huang et al (2009) investigated the relationship between mortality and air pollution, in Shanghai, China. Survey results showed that more than 2 percent people dead from PM2.5 and PM10.

At the outset, most the studies have shown that air pollution is one of the most important factors which are affecting human health. For example, in the year of 2000, there are more than 2200 people die of "PM pollution" in the city of Taiyuan (Zhang et al, 2010a). Moreover, Zeng et al (2010) has also showed that air pollution is harmful for human health by examining the effects