The more dangerous air pollutants are:

Sulphur Dioxide – high concentrations can result in breathing impairment for asthmatics who
are active outdoors. As can be seen from the graph below, levels have been consistently low in
Ireland since 2002, with a slight downward trend. This trend is reflective in the shift in fuel
choice across Ireland in both the residential heating sector and the energy production sector.
This shift has been from sulphur containing bituminous coal to those fuels which are low in SO2
production, such as natural gas (EPA, 2013).

Sulphur 2006-2016
Courtesy EPA

Ozone at ground level - exposure to this can irritate breathing, decrease lung function, inflame
airways and worsen lung conditions such as asthma. It can also affect crops and other
vegetation and even buildings.

Lead – Extended exposure may lead to seizures, mental problems and behavioural disorders.
At low doses lead exposure is linked to damage of the nervous systems in young children.

Carbon monoxide - CO reduces oxygen in the blood stream, when it enters the body through
the lungs. The danger of this pollutant increases in people who suffer cardiovascular diseases
such as angina.

Benzene– Long term inhalation can cause disorders in the blood – including reduced red blood
cells and anemia

Particulate matter – These particulates are so small that they get deep into your respiratory
tract and increase the risk of disorders.
 Oxides of Nitrogen – it has a direct effect on health, as short-term exposure reduces lung
function while long term exposure is linked to increased risk of respiratory infection in
children. NOx levels in urban areas are influenced by weather episodes, which accounts for
some of the variation seen in annual results.

N2O 2006-2016
Courtesy EPA ©
Source: http://www.askaboutireland.ie/enfo/irelands-environment/air-quality/which-pollutants-
are-dang/

Who is affected by air pollution?

Everyone can be affected by air pollution especially when exposed over prolonged periods of
time. However, some groups of people may be more susceptible than others in regards to
exposure to air pollution. Different pollutants may affect these groups differently. For example,
several of the pollutants may trigger symptoms in people with asthma, whereas people with
heart disease are most likely to be affected by particle pollution.
The following people are more likely to be affected:
 People with asthma: exposure to air pollution might worsen your symptoms or trigger asthma
attacks. Use your reliever medicine and check you have an up to date asthma action plan.
 People with lung disease, such as chronic bronchitis (also called chronic obstructive
pulmonary disease or COPD): exposure to air pollution might worsen your symptoms. Use
your reliever medicine and see your doctor if symptoms don’t resolve.
 People with cardiovascular (heart) disease: exposure to air pollution might induce
symptoms such as palpitations, chest pain or shortness of breath. If your symptoms persist or
are severe, you should seek urgent medical advice from your doctor or nearest Emergency
Department.
People can be more susceptible to some type of air pollution in certain life stages:
 Unborn babies (pregnant women): exposure to high levels of air pollution over longer time
periods (ie weeks to months) may be linked to adverse pregnancy outcomes such as reduced
birth weight or preterm birth.
 Children are likely to be more vulnerable to exposure to air pollution compared to adults for
the following reasons:
 Their lungs are still growing and developing
 Their immune and metabolic systems are still developing
 They suffer from frequent respiratory infections
 They are more active outdoors than adults and therefore breathe in higher doses of
outdoor pollutant
 However, most evidence suggests that this is more likely in situations when concentrations are
elevated over long periods of time and not just over a few days. There is so far no evidence
that short-term increases in air pollution have permanent effects on the developing lung.

Some children are especially vulnerable. This includes children with underlying chronic lung
conditions such as asthma and cystic fibrosis.

 Older adults: Older people are more likely to be affected by air pollution, perhaps due to
generally weaker immune systems, or undiagnosed respiratory or cardiovascular health
conditions. As people age, their bodies are less able to compensate for the effects of
environmental hazards. Air pollution can aggravate heart disease and stroke, lung diseases
such as chronic bronchitis (also called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD) and
asthma.
http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/environment/air/Pages/who-is-affected.aspx

carbon monoxide (CO)

odorless, colorless, poisonous gas
created by incomplete combustion (especially bad with older cars)
generates headaches, drowsiness, fatigue, can result in death
oxides of nitrogen (NOx, NO)
NO - nitric oxide
emitted directly by autos, industry
sulfur oxides (SOx)
SO2 - sulfur dioxide
produced largely through coal burning
responsible for acid rain problem
volatile organic compounds (VOCs)
highly reactive organic compounds
release through incomplete combustion and industrial sources
particulate matter (dust, ash, salt particles)
 bad for your lungs

Source: http://apollo.lsc.vsc.edu/classes/met130/notes/chapter18/primary.html

Air quality monitoring in urban environments

Abstract:
Air pollution is both an environmental and a social problem, as it leads to a multitude of adverse
effects on human health, ecosystems and the climate. Air pollution is one of the largest
environmental health risks in Europe today. Quality of the air in city and urban areas is the most
important factor that directly influences the incidence of diseases and decreases the quality of
life. Taking appropriate decisions in a timely period depends on the measurement and analysis
of the parameters of the air, which creates the need for the development of real time air quality
monitoring. The use of multi-parameter air quality monitoring systems makes it possible to do a
detailed level analysis of major pollutants and their sources. These monitoring systems are
important components in many smart city projects for monitoring air quality and for controlling
the main pollutant concentrations in urban areas. In this paper we present an approach for cost-
effective measurement of relevant environmental parameters, based on a scalable sensor array
with integrated amperometric and infrared gas sensors. The device has been tested in the city
and the measurement was compared with the output data of the local environmental control
authority stations. The preliminary results show that this approach can be used as an
economical alternative to the professional grade systems.

Introduction and Motivation

The presence of particulates, biological molecules, or other harmful materials in the Earth's
atmosphere causes air pollution, which leads to diseases, human casualties, and damage to
other living organisms such as animals and food crops, or to the natural or built environment. Air
pollution may originate from anthropogenic or natural sources [1]. Large-scale industry, which is
increasingly positioned outside metropolitan regions and urban areas, is not considered to be
the primary source for the inferior air quality. Recent studies indicate that road traffic is the main
source of urban air pollution. Road transport is responsible on average for 25% of all harmful
emissions in Europe. In many EU countries this value is higher than 30%. The loss of
environmental quality, together with the environmental impact of air quality, especially in large
cities, both on the health and the welfare of people is one of the greatest threats of this century
[2], [3]. According to EU official figures, about 225 000 people die from diseases, caused by car
emissions in Europe every year. To combat this threat, the European Union has introduced
stricter laws and intends to reduce car emissions by 20% by 2020 [4]. Advances in embedded
systems and new gas sensors technologies provide an opportunity for a new generation of low-
cost air quality monitoring systems to emerge. Low cost air quality sensors are the force that
drives the development of emerging electronic technologies, which are increasingly widely
accepted and implemented. The number of those commercially available devices has increased
dramatically over the last five years although the quality of the data which they provide is still
questionable [4]. The main goal of our study is to develop low-cost, mobile, air quality sensor
nodes and to investigate whether such systems can provide reliable results and indications
about air quality and can be used in practice. This approach should provide easier access to air
quality monitoring data to a wider audience of citizens, scientists and control authorities.

Source: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7563237/
Modelling background air pollution exposure in urban
environments: Implications for epidemiological research
Abstract
Background pollution represents the lowest levels of ambient air pollution to which the
population is chronically exposed, but few studies have focused on thoroughly
characterizing this regime. This study uses clustering statistical techniques as a
modelling approach to characterize this pollution regime while deriving reliable
information to be used as estimates of exposure in epidemiological studies. The
background levels of four key pollutants in five urban areas of Andalusia (Spain) were
characterized over an 11-year period (2005–2015) using four widely-known clustering
methods. For each pollutant data set, the first (lowest) cluster representative of the
background regime was studied using finite mixture models, agglomerative hierarchical
clustering, hidden Markov models (hmm) and k-means. Clustering
method hmm outperforms the rest of the techniques used, providing important
estimates of exposures related to background pollution as its mean, acuteness and time
incidence values in the ambient air for all the air pollutants and sites studied.

Introduction
Determining the population's health risks due to ambient air pollution is critical to the
development of effective risk management policies and strategies (Samet and Krewski,
2007). To better understand the adverse health effects associated with air pollution,
accurate exposure assessment is essential. Epidemiological studies have provided a
substantial body of evidence linking daily concentrations of outdoor air pollution to
adverse effects on a range of health outcomes. Studies have tended to focus on the
mass concentrations of particles and selected gaseous pollutants, but more insight is
required regarding the most harmful sources and components of the air pollution
mixture to inform focused public health protection policies (Atkinson et al., 2016).
Background concentration is the ambient level of pollution that is not affected by
local sources of pollution (WHO, 1980, Menichini et al., 2007). There are two
motivations for focusing on this regime: (i) to better understand the contribution of local
sources to total pollutant concentrations; and (ii) to allow the assessment of
new pollutant sources that are introduced into the area of study and their impact on
local air quality. However, up until now research has not significantly addressed this
lowest fraction of pollution as representative of a permanent concentration of ambient
air pollution to which the population is chronically exposed. This work focuses on this
specific fraction of pollution.
Han et al. (2015) classify the methods to determine the background pollution using four
categories: (i) physical methods to identify the regional and local pollution processes via
atmospheric variables; (ii) chemical methods to identify the chemical composition of air
pollutants; (iii) numerical simulations methods using trajectory models; and (iv)
statistical methods. Regarding the latter, Langford et al. (2009) used principal
component analysis to describe the local background O3 concentrations recorded during
76 days in 30 monitoring sites in Texas. Tchepel et al. (2010) study the contributions to
background pollution of PM10 from different sources in four monitoring sites in Lisbon
(Portugal) during two days, through air quality time series via spectral analysis. Other
authors have used clustering techniques to characterize regimes in air pollution. Austin
et al. (2012) classify air pollution daily data during six years performing k-means (km)
and hierarchical clustering for identifying profiles in them. Beaver and Palazoglu
(2006) used an aggregated solution of km to characterize classes of ozone episodes
occurring in the San Francisco Bay. Considerable effort has been made to characterize
profiles of key air pollutants (Carslaw and Ropkins, 2012, Carlsaw and Beevers, 2013)
since the threshold values that can be considered safe for human health is still under
debate. Pioneering research work explored this relationship for O3 and PM10 (Koop and
Tole, 2006), and for PM2.5 (Kiesewetter et al., 2015). Background profiles of CO and
NOx were studied by Venegas and Mazzeo (2006) in the city of Buenos Aires, and for
NOx, NO2 and O3in the California South Coast Air Basin by Pournazery et al. (2014).
This study proposes the use of statistical clustering techniques as a methodology for the
estimation of background pollution in urban environments. To that end, four well-known
clustering methods were compared using data obtained from monitoring sites, namely:
finite mixture models (fmm), agglomerative hierarchical clustering (hc), hidden Markov
models (hmm) and km.
This study aims to: (i) evaluate the best clustering statistical method to estimate the
background pollution; and (ii) provide model-derived exposure estimates from the best
method as inputs for epidemiological research. The best clustering method was
assessed according to its ability to cluster the lowest concentrations of ambient air
pollution in a consistent manner. To that end, data sets from key pollutants CO, NO 2,
O3 and PM10 from five monitoring sites in Andalusia (south of Spain) were studied over
11 years.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364815217300816