Air Pollution, Health and Ethics

Authors: Attfield R

DOI: 10.23880/abca-16000103

Volume 1, Issue 1

Abstract

Recent findings about nitrogen dioxide pollution in Britain and about particulate pollution worldwide raise ethical issues about the protection of human (and animal) health. Many urban areas of Britain have been found to have illegally high levels of NO2. But it turns out that there is a world-wide problem with particulates, particularly in large towns and cities in Third world countries, as well as in much of Europe and North America. In many cases diesel engines are to blame, and these should be phased out as soon as possible. In other cases the source is to be found in unregulated industrial expansion, or in dust-storms from recently expanding deserts. Remedies thus include reafforestation, the preservation or restoration of wetlands, and moves away from carbon-based electricity generation to generation from renewables, and from internal combustion engines to electric cars. The ethical case for saving people from nitrogen dioxide and particulate pollution turns out importantly to overlap with that for greenhouse gas mitigation. 

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