A breakdown of the sources of many air pollutants that damage our health and ecosystems.
Air pollution kills millions every year — where does it come from? Millions of people die prematurely from air pollution every year. This problem has existed since humans started burning materials for fuel — first wood and biomass, then fossil fuels. But it's an environmental and public health problem that we can make progress on. We know this because the world has already been successful in reducing air pollutants, and many countries that used to be highly polluted now have much cleaner air than they used to. To tackle air pollution effectively — to focus our efforts on the interventions that will have the biggest impact — we need to understand where it's coming from. That's why we wrote this article.1 A note on data and definitions The main data source we rely on is the Community Emissions Data System (CEDS). There are a couple of reasons why we think it's an incredibly valuable resource: It has long-term global and national data extending back to the 18th century and is frequently updated with the latest estimates for 2022. It's published with an open-access license and transparent methodology and inputs, which you can find on GitHub . The peer-reviewed paper describing the methodology is here . 2 This online data resource is open to user comments and feedback, so errors or issues can be easily reported. CEDS provides clear documentation of data improvements and detailed comparisons of recent updates against previous versions. To be clear, CEDS does not have high-quality measurements of emissions of air pollutants — certainly not dating back to the 18th century. These figures are calculated and modeled based on inputs, such as the quantity of different fuels that were burned, technological advancements and pollution controls, fertilizer use, and agricultural production. You can, for example, estimate the amount of sulfur dioxide produced from burning one tonne of coal in a power plant (with or without pollution filters). Of course, this means the data…