Air Pollution Sources

Why Focus on Source Awareness

It's hard to find solutions to any problem without a clear sense of what’s causing it. This is especially true when talking about air quality.

Black clouds from nearby smokestacks and tailpipes are easy to see, but most emissions and the chemical reactions that combine them into air pollution are invisible. These pollutants may originate from nearby sources or they may have traveled across borders and through the atmosphere from faraway places.

Untangling the Air Pollution Problem

Broad global sources of air pollution are well known, but the specific contributors to local pollution vary and require specialized analysis to disentangle.
  • Soil dust air pollution

    Dust

    Soil dust can make up more than 50% of air pollution in cities near deserts and drylands, while sea salt particles contribute to urban pollution near the ocean. Dust from construction and roads contributes to localized hotpots within cities. Pollen from near and far forests also adds to the particle load.

  • Agriculture

    Burning stubble or woodlands to clear fields for planting creates seasonal pollution that can travel hundreds of miles. Rice paddies and waste from animals emit methane, a powerful greenhouse gas and ingredient in ground-level ozone. Nitrogen from fertilizer use and animal agriculture also contributes to forming particulate matter.

  • Traffic

    Passenger and freight vehicles from motorcycles to trucks create air pollution through engine emissions, resuspension of road dust, and particles shed by tires and brakes. This pollution is typically concentrated in places with heavier congestion and idling.

  • Fossil Fuel Combustion

    Fossil fuel combustion for heating, electricity, industrial energy, and cars all contribute to background and hotspot pollution.

  • Open Burning

    Burning anything – solid waste in streets or fields, dung cakes, fireworks – creates pollution. Other sources of toxic particulate matter include aluminum scrap smelting, tanneries and spontaneous combustion in open dumps that hold most waste in low- and middle- income countries.

  • Wastewater

    Wastewater and polluted urban waterways emit methane, volatile organic compounds (VOCs), sulphur compounds and nitrous oxide, damaging pollutants that fuel ground ground-level ozone or smog.

Our multi-step approach to curbing air pollution begins with source awareness.

Data-driven strategies that help stakeholders understand the sources of air pollution, in order to build shared, politically relevant knowledge and promote solutions.

1. What are the sources of air pollution?

To create lasting solutions, we look to understand the local sources of pollution through air quality monitoring, emissions inventory, source apportionment, source attribution modeling, among other processes.

2. How are they impacting me and my community?

We may not realize it, but air pollution impacts us everyday, even when we can’t see it. Which is why we use exposure estimation, health indicator mapping, gender diagnostic reports, climate impact assessment, mobile monitoring, and satellite data to estimate how air pollution is impacting our pilot cities.

3. What can we do about it?

In order to create solutions that adapt to local circumstances, we create local partnerships, conduct capacity building and trainings, work with local partners to tackle solutions design, and conduct a communications strategy to reach as broad of an audience as possible.