城市的空气污染“超过45年”

[NAIROBI] Increased airpollutionin East Africa as revealed by decreasing visibility data over the last 45 years suggests that the sub-region is at high risk of pollution-related effects includingdiseases， A学习says.

The three cities — Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Nairobi in Kenya and Kampala in Uganda — have undergone rapid population surge, with increased citywide fuel use and motorisation leading to a rise in a mixture of extremely small particles and liquid droplets into the air, thus aiding visibility loss, adds the study published inbeplay足球体育的微博环境研究信last month.

According to a World Bank报告，室内使用固体燃料每年可能导致大约390,000人过早死亡，而Urban户外污染与49,000人死亡有关，撒哈拉以南非洲承担主要负担。

“我们的研究通过历史可见性和气象提供了对东非过去空气污染的过去模式的大大提高的理解数据.”

Ajit Singh, University of Birmingham

But the study says that lack of good quality historic air pollution data in Sub-Saharan Africa makes it difficult to understand the current air quality situation and to estimate the future air quality trajectory.

The study, which used visibility as a proxy for air pollution used data on Addis Ababa, Nairobi and Kampala for 1974 to 2018, found significant visibility decrease, allowing researchers to estimate that air pollution increased by 62 per cent in Addis Ababa, 162 per cent in Kampala and 182 per cent Nairobi.

“我们的研究通过历史可见性和气象提供了对东非过去空气污染的过去模式的大大提高的理解数据”该研究的主要作者，地理，地球与环境科学学院的研究研究员阿吉特·辛格（Ajit Singh）说。beplay足球体育的微博“城市化和人口增长的高率可能会影响这些城市的空气质量。”

Researchers obtained meteorological data with a focus on the three cities using a tool called worldmet package for 1974 to 2018, and analysed the presence of a mixture of small particles and liquid droplets into the air over monthly, annual and seasonal cycles.

“Overall, a significant loss in East African visibility was observed since the 1970s where Nairobi shows the greatest loss (60 per cent) as compared to Kampala (56 per cent) and Addis Ababa (34 per cent),” the study says. Reduced visibility is an indicator of poor air quality and increased pollution.

Historical trend of annual visibility at three East African cities 45 years of hourly data

^{Source:Ajit Singh and others}

辛格解释说，这项研究的重点是坎帕拉，亚的斯亚贝巴和内罗毕，因为它们是增长最快的城市in East Africa in terms of population, infrastructure, industrialisation and motorisation.

辛格告诉辛格说：“这项工作大大改善了数据差距，并提供了对东非空气质量趋势和相关的空气质量差的社会经济后果的实践理解，”辛格告诉scidev.net。

Africa is not well-equipped with air quality monitoring because of the high cost of air quality monitoring equipment including their appropriate calibration and certification, he explains. He adds that unless systematic approaches with effective interventions are applied to control the air pollution in in East Africa, increased pollution levels resulting from fast developments processes and activities could occur.

肯尼亚联合国环境计划的研究科学家和计划官查尔斯·塞布基拉（Charles Sebukeera）说，这项研究很重要，并且是建立证据证明东非空气污染beplay足球体育的微博趋势不断增长的努力的一部分，这归因于排放的增加由人类活动产生。

“Such analyses are needed to support [the work] of policymakers,” he adds.

But he explains that although the capacity to measure and deal with air quality monitoring is limited, there has been progress on air quality monitoring efforts in Kampala and Addis Ababa with publicly available data.

“At present there are few countries such as Uganda and Ethiopia with capacity to monitor [air quality]. It is also important to link the [air quality] monitoring to policy to reduce pollution,” he says, adding that key interventions to reduce air pollution from industries, households, cars and trucks include waste management and use of renewableenergy.

Sebukeera解释说，由于知名度下降与发展有关，因此需要通过投资清洁而在经济发展与减少主要空气污染之间取得平衡technologies例如清洁能源。

This piece was produced by SciDev.Net’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.