Air Pollution

Air pollution emissions are released from both natural and anthropogenic sources. Human-driven activities aimed at providing necessary goods and services to society are responsible for the anthropogenic share of air pollution. Air pollution emissions occur at many stages in the life cycles of products and services, that is, from raw material extraction, energy acquisition, production and manufacturing, use, reuse, recycling, through to ultimate disposal. The resulting emissions undergo several types of physical and chemical transformations and contribute to a wide range of health and environmental impacts, including deterioration of air quality, toxicological stress on human health and ecosystems, photo-oxidant formation (smog), stratospheric ozone (O3) depletion, climate change, degradation of air resources, and noise, among others (Pennington et al., 2004).