WHO is a leading advocate for policies and programmes to reduce ambient and household air pollution to protect public health at the global, national and local levels. WHO’s ongoing global leadership activities on air pollution and health focus on synthesizing the evidence-base for policy-making and tracking progress on the health impacts of air pollution.| www.who.int
A wide range of tools that support decisions on air pollution, and more generally for sustainable human settlements and urban planning, has been developed and made available for users by WHO-HQ and by WHO Regional offices. Such tools include models and frameworks, interactive websites, templates, toolkits, and software.| www.who.int
The unit for Air Quality and Health, Air Pollution and Health, provides support in the development of guidance, tools and provision of expertise and advice on health issues related to air pollution. The unit leads monitoring and reporting on global trends and changes in health outcomes associated with actions taken to address air pollution at national, regional, global levels to protect health.| www.who.int
Clean air is fundamental to health. Compared to 15 years ago, when the previous edition of these guidelines was published, there is now a much stronger body of evidence to show how air pollution affects different aspects of health at even lower concentrations than previously understood. But here’s what hasn’t changed: every year, exposure to air pollution is still estimated to cause millions of deaths and the loss of healthy years of life.| www.who.int
The indicator 3.9.1. 'Mortality rate attributed to household and ambient air pollution' tracks the total burden of disease from household and ambient air pollution.| www.who.int
Pollutants with strong empirical evidence for public health concern include particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide (CO), ozone (O3), nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and sulphur dioxide (SO2). Health problems can occur as a result of both short- and long-term exposure to these various pollutants. For some pollutants, there are no thresholds below which adverse effects do not occur.| www.who.int