Abstract
Air pollution is a major concern of new civilized world, which has a serious toxicological impact on human health and the environment. It has a number of different emission sources, but motor vehicles and industrial processes contribute the major part of air pollution. According to the World Health Organization, six major air pollutants include particle pollution, ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and lead. Long and short term exposure to air suspended toxicants has a different toxicological impact on human including respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, neuropsychiatric complications, the eyes irritation, skin diseases, and long-term chronic diseases such as cancer. Several reports have revealed the direct association between exposure to the poor air quality and increasing rate of morbidity and mortality mostly due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Air pollution is considered as the major environmental risk factor in the incidence and progression of some diseases such as asthma, lung cancer, ventricular hypertrophy, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases, psychological complications, autism, retinopathy, fetal growth, and low birth weight. In this review article, we aimed to discuss toxicology of major air pollutants, sources of emission, and their impact on human health. We have also proposed practical measures to reduce air pollution in Iran.
Air pollution has now emerged in developing countries as a result of industrial activities and also increase the quantity of emission sources such as inappropriate vehicles.[11,12,13] About 4.3 million people die from household air pollution and 3.7 million from ambient air pollution, most of whom (3.3 and 2.6 million, respectively) live in Asia.[14] In Iran, as a developing country, the level of air pollutants has increased gradually since the beginning of industrialization in the 1970s, but it has reached a very harmful level in some megacities such as Tehran, Mashhad, Tabriz, Isfahan, Ahvaz, Arak, and Karaj over the past two decades. Iran is the world's third main polluted country in the world, which results in 16 billion $ annual loss.[15] In fact, four of the top ten air-polluted cities are in Iran. Ahvaz is the most air polluted city in the world with microdust blowing in from neighboring countries, and particulate levels three times that of Beijing, and nearly 13 times that of London.[16] Air pollution caused almost 4460 deaths in 2013 only in Tehran although the reality seemed higher and is getting worse every year.[17] Therefore, it is of great importance to describe the problem, particularly its toxic effects on human health and provide recommendations as a basis for environmental guidelines and standard protocols in the field of air pollution in Iran.
The present article is neither a systematic review nor a descriptive, educational study. It is a problem-based descriptive review in which the authors try to explain a problem which is the major health and ecological problem in developing countries like Iran. In this review, we have tried to summarize the toxicology of air pollutants and related diseases with a possible mechanism of action and appropriate management of the patients. Therefore, it shall be useful for the environmental and health professionals particularly policy makers, emergency physicians, and other clinicians who may be involved in air pollution and related diseases. In this paper, we also discuss sources of air pollution and proposed some feasible solutions which may be beneficial for the environmental legislators and decision makers.
Air pollutants and their toxicities
Every material in the air which could affect human health or have a profound impact on the environment is defined as air pollutants. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), particle pollution, ground-level O3, CO, sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and lead (Pb) are the six major air pollutants which harm human health and also the ecosystem. There are many pollutants of suspended materials such as dust, fumes, smokes, mists, gaseous pollutants, hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and halogen derivatives in the air which at the high concentrations cause vulnerability to many diseases including different types of cancers.[29,30,31,32] The most important air pollutants and their toxic effects on different human body organs and related diseases have been briefly described below.
Explanation:
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Melina B.