Pye, O. T. Havala. (2022, January 10). “Human-Health Impacts of Controlling Secondary Air Pollution Precursors.” Anthropogenic Impacts, ACS Publications. Retrieved February 15, 2022, from https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.estlett.1c00798

 

The ongoing exposure of the toxic air pollutants, specifically, particulate matter (PM 2.5) and ozone (O3), are causing noticeable health issues for humans across the world. However, these pollutants are secondary in nature which means they are something that is originally produced by us but end up harming us in the air. These pollutants can also create more toxins like nitrous oxides and sulfur oxides. On top of these, VOCs also play a big role in these damages; By reducing these anthropogenic VOC emissions, we would be reducing twice as much air pollution damages within human health compared to the sulfur and nitrous oxides produced by O3 and PM2.5. This shows that we must be attacking the emissions of VOCs much more than we are currently.

This is astonishing because VOCs have not been talked about within these articles that I have been looking at. It seems to be the natural consensus that the ozone and particulate matter are the main pollutants that are mostly ibeings talking about. After doing more research on the VOCs, they are increasingly more damaging when in the air because they feed off of other pollutants that are also in the air. The fact that reading VOCs instead is twice as effective for our human health and the air’s health makes me think that it must be extremely difficult to do so, or else we would already be on it.