Introduction:
Air pollution is an alarming issue and concern for the entire universe. It not only pollutes the air but also results in causing diseases like asthma, chronic bronchitis, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and more. The emission of particulate matter gives rise to multiple environmental problems with public health consequences that have proven to be worse. Despite various regulatory efforts, they still marked an increase of 85,000 to 200,000 extra loss of lives every year. As per a study, more than 100,000 heart attacks and almost nine million cases of exacerbated asthma were reported. These consequences are majorly faced by individuals of low socioeconomic status or people residing in developing countries.
To provide justice to the environment, strengthening and complete enforcement of policies that reduce dangerous pollution for all communities is the need of the hour.
What Is Environmental Justice?
Environmental justice is a social justice event that seeks to dismantle the lack of environmental policies that have caused harm to low-income communities and communities of color for a long time. Instead, pursued policy and development that enables the creation of a sustainable, cooperative, and equitable future for the environment. It relies on the rule that everyone has an equal right to a clean and healthy environment.
How Is Air Pollution Caused?
Air pollution is caused primarily by the solid and liquid particles and certain gases that remain suspended in the air. These particles and gases originate from vehicles, factories, dust, pollen, mold spores, volcanoes, wildfires, etc. These solid and liquid particles that remain suspended in the air are called aerosols.
What Factors Affect the Environment?
Some of the factors that are responsible for affecting the environment are:
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Climate Change: Climate change is a kind of long-term change in the average weather patterns that comprise the Earth’s local, regional, and global climates. Multiple changes were observed in Earth’s climate in the mid-20th century and are monitored by human activities, particularly burning fossil fuels, which increases the heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere, elevating Earth’s surface temperature.
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Increased Number of Automobiles and Factories: Due to the exponential increase in the number of vehicles and factories, a lot of toxic substances are emitted. These not only get mixed with the air but also with the drinking water. These can result in causing serious health hazards in people, especially children.
How Are Environmental Justice and Air Pollution Exposure Linked?
Clean and pure air is a crucial factor for healthy living. Yet, many people still breathe unhealthy air, and the burden is not evenly distributed. Some communities are disproportionately impacted by air pollution - those carrying the highest-burden are certain communities of color and low-earning people. This improper burden has led to calls for environmental justice. This is about more than breathing air; it is about health and lives.
People who receive bad air quality are more susceptible to facing a wide range of serious health issues. Air pollution can cause some critical respiratory and cardiovascular issues, particularly in developing bodies of children. It can result in asthma attacks occurring frequently, heart attacks and strokes, lung cancer, reproductive harm, premature birth, and low birth weight, and can even be fatal at the early stages of life.
During the pandemic, emerging studies revealed that exposure to even minute amounts of air pollution over a long duration can make a person eight percent more susceptible to die from COVID-19. The lives lost, and the disproportionate health burden because of the air pollution resulted in an economic crisis as well. Such communities had to deal with more missed days of school and work, as well as the additional financial strain of medical costs of more hospitalization. Everyone should get the chance to live a full and healthy life. Every nation should ensure clean air for its citizens irrespective of their community, earnings, etc. Every person deserves to breathe air that is safe for them and does not make them ill.
Environmental justice can be attained by attacking the root cause of the problem, which is excessive air pollution from multiple sources that get mixed in the air. It has frequently shown its most serious health impacts hundreds of miles from where it was produced. It should be the first and foremost concern of environmental justice advocates or environmental justice efforts undertaken by the different governments.
What Can Be Done to Achieve Environmental Justice?
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It is crucial to formulate, execute, and enforce some strong and beneficial health and environmental laws and policies to address the factors that are responsible for leading to disproportionate levels of exposure to air pollution in particular communities.
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Cleaning up all the possible sources of air pollution in communities and decreasing their exposure to such pollutants.
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As the nation transitions to cleaner sources of electricity, disproportionately burdened low-economic communities must be made a priority for clean-up in their respective regions.
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Regular visits and assessments of the impacts of air pollution in communities near sources of dangerous air pollutants like highways, ports, industrial boilers, power plants, and other sources of air pollution should be done by the concerned authorities.
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Aggressive targeting of the pollution sources for cleanup must be incorporated to decrease the disbalanced health burdens of the economically disadvantaged and politically disenfranchised communities.
The environmental justice movement has become a huge voice in the climate policy discourse. Utilizing the lens of distributive justice, the movement has raised various concerns about the disproportionate impacts of climate change, the distribution of climate policy benefits, and the phenomenon of climate change mitigation and adaptation costs. More involvement of marginalized communities via the lens of participatory justice in the policy process is seen by many as a crucial step toward attaining more beneficial outcomes.
Conclusion:
Air pollution has led to numerous serious issues, particularly in the low-economic class of society. A key element of the work towards finding solutions for such environmental issues is ensuring that the vulnerable groups that are mostly affected by air pollution and climate change too can raise their voice in conversations around potential solutions. Proper implementation of a few laws and policies can help in attaining environmental justice all over the world.
