Looking for pollution where the people are

Abstract

For several decades developed countries have sought to protect the health of their citizens by monitoring and regulating outdoor air pollution. But are smog and other outdoor pollutants the gravest dangers to human health? A new way of looking at air pollution indicates that the danger is closer to home-in our homes, in fact, and in our cars and workplaces. About 90 percent of people's time in developed countries is spent indoors where cigarette smoke, household deodorizers and dry-cleaned clothes expose them to greater concentrations of pollutants than they will find outdoors in the most congested cities. The situation is even worse in developing countries where pollutants from household stoves help make respiratory diseases the chief cause of illness and death. Something less than 2 percent of global person-hours is spent in the urban outdoor settings of developed countries where 95 percent of pollution measurements have been taken. Measuring pollution where people are could result in dramatic changes in policy and funding priorities for controlling air pollution.