This presentation aims to increase the students’ knowledge about environmental epidemiology, by introducing different study designs used to study health effects of exposure to outdoor air pollution. All study designs are illustrated by examples, starting with the Great Smog (Killer Fog) of London in 1952, one of the landmarks in environmental epidemiology.

Nearly one third of the world’s population are exposed to high levels of indoor air pollution from the household’s use of solid fuel. The fuel is mainly biomass burning under poor combustion conditions
in open fires or primitive stoves and with low ventilation. This costs more than 4 million lives every year and enormous suffering in particular among women and children.

What is air pollution? What is it in the air that is harmful? This lecture focuses on air pollution, where it occur, and how it spread.

In this presentation, we will describe the global levels and trends in major air pollutants and related health burden. Air pollution is an important global risk factor for disease. People who live in more polluted areas develop more often chronic and infectious disease and die prematurely as compared to people living in areas with low air pollution.

In large part of the World, people spend more than 90 percent of the time in indoor environments, where air quality is important for health. The environment outside the building, what goes on inside the building and the exchange of air pollutants affects the indoor air. Tight buildings can reduce energy consumption and entry of outdoor air pollutants, but unless ventilation is right indoor air pollutants from combustion processes, dampness, microbes, the dwellers bio effluents,
appliances, care and cleaning products, clothing, furniture, building materials, the underground and many other sources will build up indoors causing important health effects.

In this presentation, we will discuss how we can know whether one individual is more susceptible to harmful effect of air pollution than others are. Everyone is exposed, but some groups may be more susceptible to the harmful effect of air pollution than others may.

In this lecture, we will describe the mechanisms by which air pollution causes pulmonary health effects in the human population. The pulmonary health effects include exacerbation of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), increased risk of lower
respiratory tracts infections and lung cancer.

In this presentation, we will describe the mechanisms by which air pollution causes health effects in other parts of the body than the lungs. In continuation of this, we will discuss the important mechanisms of extra pulmonary health effect.

There is a long way before the whole world complies with the WHO guidelines for air quality, but the enormous burden of disease from outdoor air pollution forces us to increase action to come as far as possible. In continuation of this, we will discuss what we can do about air pollution at global, international, national, city and individual levels. Most of the actions to reduce air pollution also mitigates climate change and/or promote health in other ways – so there are many win-win and
win-win-win situations