跳至主要内容

Air Pollution Related to Traffic and Chronic Respiratory Diseases (Asthma and COPD) in Africa

Air pollution is an important environmental risk factor with global public health implications. Chronic respiratory diseases (CRD) are obvious effects of air pollution and the third reason of death in developing countries. In Africa, air pollution from road traffic is one of the main causes of poor air quality. In this review, the authors aimed to present the state of knowledge in Africa on the impact of external air pollution, particularly related to traffic, on chronic respiratory diseases and to propose strategies to fight this pollution.

In the review, the authors set out to systematically review existing published researches on traffic related to air pollution and CRD, particularly asthma and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in Africa. And a literature search of PubMed, Scholar and LISSA databases, published journals, reference articles, published up to 31 December 2016, had been done by using a research strategy procedure. Texts were reviewed for inclusion. Studies were included if they met the following criteria: 1) the relationship between asthma or COPD with ambient air pollution related to road traffic was studied and 2) the population included people from Africa or lived in Africa. Articles written in English and French were included.

The results indicated that fifty-five articles were selected in this review, of which twenty-seven were on air pollution and CRD in Africa. The proximity of the residence or workplace to the traffic is associated with an increased risk of asthma with a dose-response relationship. The estimated prevalence of COPD varies between 2.7% and 38.5%. 

In conclusion, little research has been done on the effects of air pollution from cars on respiratory health in contrast to indoor air pollution, in particular that related to the combustion of biomass. Strategies to reduce traffic related to air pollution in African cities have been proposed in order to have a healthier ambient air.

Article by Fatou K. Sylla, et al, from Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD), Dakar, Senegal.

Full access: http://mrw.so/1zgy2q

Image by tokyofortwo, from Flickr-cc.

评论

发表评论

此博客中的热门博文

Does Immigration Promote the Investment of the Monopolistic Firm?

In the present paper, we examine the effect of increasing uncertainty of immigrants’ growth on the optimal timing of investment of a firm that has a monopolistic power over the labor market. It is revealed that when the uncertainty of immigrants’ growth is more than a threshold level, increasing uncertainty of immigrants’ growth accelerates the optimal timing of firms’ investment and enhances the economic growth, even if the uncertainty of immigrants’ growth is formulated by the geometric Brownian motion, which is in sharp contrast to the standard result that an increase in the uncertainty postpones the optimal timing. With an increase in the immigrants over the past ten years, workforces in the host countries have been growing significantly to the extent that the immigrants represent 70% of the increase in the workforce in Europe, and 47% in the United States as OECD indicates. In the present paper, we attempted to investigate the effect of increased uncertainty caused by the growi...
发表评论
阅读全文

Education Policy Implementation: A Mechanism for Enhancing Primary Education Development in Zanzibar

Education is one of the fundamental rights of individuals; therefore, the government of a country needs to develop and strengthen educational policy and quality as well as to ensure that everyone has equal access to basic education. The improvement of access and quality of education in the world is becoming as an essential factor in development, whereas the basic education (primary school), is acknowledged as a foundation of the higher educational development for every country. To fulfill this goal, governments introduce several policies and procedures; however, it requires some reforms and participation from the politician, policymakers, and other stakeholders to re-examine educational policy so that it can lead to multiplication and betterment of the reforms. Educational reforms actually focus on accountability. A positive educational development and reform is very challenging and needs more effort and strategy on how to use and utilize the resources effectively as such it can achie...
发表评论
阅读全文

Electron Spin and Proton Spin in the Hydrogen and Hydrogen-Like Atomic Systems

Read full paper at: http://www.scirp.org/journal/PaperInformation.aspx?PaperID=52202#.VIj7tMnQrzE Author(s) Stanisław Olszewski * Affiliation(s) Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland . ABSTRACT The mechanical angular momentum and magnetic moment of the electron and proton spin have been calculated semiclassically with the aid of the uncertainty principle for energy and time. The spin effects of both kinds of the elementary particles can be expressed in terms of similar formulae. The quantization of the spin motion has been done on the basis of the old quantum theory. It gives a quantum number n = 1/2 as the index of the spin state acceptable for both the electron and proton ...
发表评论
阅读全文