Urban Air Quality as a Coupled Transport-Health-Equity System

Authors

  • Benjamin Walker Author

Keywords:

urban air pollution, transport, exposure, health equity, environmental policy

Abstract

This interdisciplinary review examines urban air quality as a coupled transport, health, and equity system. The organizing question is which interventions reduce population exposure rather than merely relocate monitored emissions. Ten related scholarly sources are synthesized through a decision-centered framework spanning problem definition, mechanism, measurement, evaluation, implementation, and governance. The review does not invent experiments, pooled estimates, or unreported quantitative results. It instead evaluates the strength and transferability of the available evidence, with particular attention to using citywide concentration averages to infer equitable health benefit. The resulting framework links technical or empirical performance to explicit use conditions and identifies tests that should precede wider adoption in clean-mobility and urban-health policy.

References

  1. Bourdrel, T., Bind, M. A., Béjot, Y., Morel, O., & Argacha, J. F. (2017). Cardiovascular effects of air pollution. Archives of cardiovascular diseases, 110(11), 634-642. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.acvd.2017.05.003
  2. Di, Q., Wang, Y., Zanobetti, A., Wang, Y., Koutrakis, P., Choirat, C., Dominici, F., & Schwartz, J. D. (2017). Air Pollution and Mortality in the Medicare Population. New England Journal of Medicine, 376(26), 2513-2522. https://doi.org/10.1056/nejmoa1702747
  3. Janhäll, S. (2015). Review on urban vegetation and particle air pollution – Deposition and dispersion. Atmospheric Environment, 105, 130-137. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.atmosenv.2015.01.052
  4. Kelly, F. J., & Fussell, J. C. (2015). Air pollution and public health: emerging hazards and improved understanding of risk. Environmental Geochemistry and Health, 37(4), 631-649. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10653-015-9720-1
  5. Manisalidis, I., Stavropoulou, E., Stavropoulos, A., & Bezirtzoglou, E. (2020). Environmental and Health Impacts of Air Pollution: A Review. Frontiers in Public Health, 8, 14. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2020.00014
  6. Rajagopalan, S., Al-Kindi, S. G., & Brook, R. D. (2018). Air Pollution and Cardiovascular Disease. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 72(17), 2054-2070. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2018.07.099
  7. Rentschler, J., & Leonova, N. (2023). Global air pollution exposure and poverty. Nature Communications, 14(1), 4432. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-39797-4
  8. Sridharan, S., Kumar, M., Singh, L., Bolan, N. S., & Saha, M. (2021). Microplastics as an emerging source of particulate air pollution: A critical review. Journal of Hazardous Materials, 418, 126245. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhazmat.2021.126245
  9. Wang, T., Xue, L., Brimblecombe, P., Lam, Y. F., Li, L., & Zhang, L. (2016). Ozone pollution in China: A review of concentrations, meteorological influences, chemical precursors, and effects. The Science of The Total Environment, 575, 1582-1596. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2016.10.081
  10. Wright, S. L., Ulke, J., Font, A., Chan, K. L. A., & Kelly, F. J. (2019). Atmospheric microplastic deposition in an urban environment and an evaluation of transport. Environment International, 136, 105411. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2019.105411

Downloads

Published

2026-08-05

Issue

Vol. 1 (2026): Archive

Section

Interdisciplinary Review

License

Copyright (c) 2026 Global Questions: An Interdisciplinary Review

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.