Air pollution is the most urgent environmental problem in most parts of the world, because air pollution causes far the majority of the health problems related to environmental pollution. This is the case in most urban areas of the world. Even here in the European Union, more than 400,000 people die prematurely every year due to air pollution. And here in Denmark, nationally, one of the countries with least air pollution, still, more than 3,000 Danes die prematurely every year. To comparison, less than 200 Danes die in traffic accidents. So, air pollution is still one of the largest health problems, and thereby one of the most expensive health problems in most parts of the world. My name is Kare Press-Kristensen. My educational background is a Masters degree and a PhD degree in environmental engineering from the Technical University of Denmark. For more than ten years I worked in the area of air pollution, mainly by measuring different air pollutants. Mainly in European cities, but in Mexico City, and other places as well, because the key shows that today air pollution is almost invisible. Therefore, people do not pay attention to the air pollution. When we talk about the pollutants, what makes us sick? What makes us die prematurely? It is mainly particulate matter and ground level ozone. Particulate matter is both directly emitted particles and particles formed from sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, nox, and ammonia from farming. So these three gasses lead to the formation of secondary particles, causing huge health problems. This is the case for outdoor pollution, we're going to talk indoor pollution. Carbon monoxide is very important as well, increasing child mortality. There's a huge problem, especially in developing regions not having access to electricity, using primitive kitchen facilities with oven burning directly indoor. Of course releasing dust particles as well to our indoor environment. When we look upon the pollution sources, we have some sources that are important all over the planet. First and fore, we have traffic, as we see here behind me. Road traffic of course, giving lots of noise, but emitting lots of air pollution as well. Especially ultrafine soot particles and nitrogen oxides as well. And what do we do to limit this? Well from a technical point, it's not very difficult. The noxious, the nitrogen oxides, can be removed by catalytic converters, and the particles can be removed by particulate filters. By combining catalytic converters and particulate filter systems in the exhaust gas system, the pollution can reduce by more than 90%. So from a technical point of view, we have no challenge. The challenge is from a management point of view. From a political point of view, how do you get these technical solutions into the exhaust systems of the traffic behind me? We have two possibilities. For new vehicles, we can introduce emission limits. And thereby make sure, that the emission limits are so strict, that to sell new vehicles, you can now fulfill these emission limit values by having the air pollution control equipment in the exhaust system. But how about all existing vehicles? Here the trick is to introduce low emission zones that the zones covering city areas, sensitive city areas with lots of people. And these areas will restrict how many vehicles can go in, or how old a vehicle can be. So the oldest vehicles can not enter the sensitive city environment and this has been a very efficient tool in Europe to limit the air pollution in cities from old vehicles. But we have other sources than just traffic. We have non-road mobile machinery or construction machinery used on construction sites. This machinery is typical on the whole day, causing lots of global air pollution. Exposure to people working on the site and of course the pollution is spreading to the city environments around the sites. Again, which are diesel engines and thereby which are pollution with particulate matter and nox. Again, from a technical point, easy removable by installing catalytic converters and particulate filters. However, this is only done if it is required and this is where the management point of view comes into it. By deciding again, or regulating that all new, non-road mobile machinery, construction machinery, needs to have low emissions. You can make sure that they automatically have installed air pollution control equipment before they are sold. And for all existing machinery, again you can regulate that by low emission zones, requiring that the construction machinery used inside these zones have air pollution control equipment. But this needs to be done from a management point of view, a political point view. In Copenhagen we are under the Euro standards, so all new vehicles sold, have particulate filters and catalytic converters. We even have a no emission zone here in Copenhagen, making sure that old vehicles without filters cannot drive into the city. The construction machinery used during the construction of the new major city ring here in Copenhagen needs particulate filters and nox, that is required from a management point of view. So this is very efficient when we talk road traffic and construction machinery. But with many other pollution sources as well, most global pollution sources, international pollution sources, like shipping, an international sector, contributes gas to air pollution. Here in Denmark surrounding by waters with intense ship traffic, the pollution from shipping causes as much as mortality and morbidity as the pollution of all land-based emission sources in Denmark. Shipping is a huge pollution source but an international pollution source as well and thereby from a management point of view, what do we do? We have the same pollutants. We have the sulfur dioxide, we have the nox, we have the particles, but to regulate this we cannot do it on a national basis. Not even on a regional basis, we need it at the international level. Thereby we have the International Maritime Organization, IMO, regulating the pollution from shipping. The regulation is quite weak compared to land based pollution sources but it is starting to come in. From the first of January of this year, we had the second arrest, where we put requirements on how much sulfur there can be in heavy bunker fuel for shipping within the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. And this is from a management point of view, the way to do it, international regulation. Another thing is then the enforcement, that's very important from a management point of view again. Who will control the shipping? It's easy to control the cars here behind me. The police can do that. It's easy to control the non-road mobile machinery on the construction sites. The authorities can do that. But who controls shipping? Who are allowed to do that? What if they are in international waters? So from a management point of view, there are many issues not being solved yet to control and enforce the decided regulation. We have very local air pollution problems as well, where we need solutions on a city basis. That is, for example, residential burning in residential neighborhoods. In Copenhagen, in the outer areas, we have residential areas with one-family houses, and there's lots of pollution there. When you have intensive burning of wood, you can have the same pollution levels as you have in the rush hour here on the most polluted street in the center of Copenhagen. And this residential burning emits high levels of particulate matter and it is out of control. There's no strict regulation, there is actually almost no regulation of residential burning. And here we need on the city level, either to introduce low emission zones restricting residential burning in residential areas. For example, forbidding wood burning, where you have gas and district heating. Or you would start to tax residential burning and thereby make it unattractive to use residential burning, in areas where low pollution gas or district heating. So even on a municipal level, you need management, you need regulation of problems that might seem small, but in Denmark, residential wood burning actually emits 70% of the total particle pollution. Traffic only emits about 15%. So residential burning is a huge issue, not only in developing areas, but in developed countries as well. Another sector is farming. Farming emits a huge amount of ammonia. Ammonia is not really toxic in itself, but in the atmosphere, it leads to the formation of a particulate matter. And thereby contributing significantly to mortality and mobility in the population. For farming, we need national regulation as well. That can be done from a technical point of view by just reducing the pH a little bit in the manure, thereby avoiding the ammonia evaporation. But you need to do that, you need to implement it. And again, farming is one of the areas being a little out of control. You have no efficient political regulation making sure that the technical solutions are actually out in the farms are introduced and established. So again, the technical solutions are ready but we're waiting for the politicians and this is where the management part come in. Management, environmental manager is just as important as the technical solutions themselves. Finally, we have power plants. In industrialized parts of the world emissions from power plants is not very high. It's mainly vapor water coming out of chimneys. Because we have very strict regulations for power plants and industrial facilities for ages in the developed part of the world. China and other regions, of course, we need much stricter standards. But they are really coming up to us. And some areas, very poor areas like Bangladesh, of course industrial facilities for huge air pollution for both nox and particulate matter and SO2, the sulfur dioxide. And again, that can be solved by scrubbers, by catalytic converters, by filters. But we need, again, to have this management into the political process to have the decision and then to have these decisions implemented in reality. And that might be one of the key management challenges, especially in the developing part of the world. Here behind me I show you the air pollution management station in Copenhagen. The air pollution management stations are a very important management tool to follow the development in the air pollution, and to find the effects on different pollution reduction things, like low emission zones, like new filters. Did they work? Do they limit the pollution? What more needs to be done to follow and to obey and fulfill the limit values? And that's why we need monitoring. Monitoring and knowledge is the way to better management.
