Air pollution in Nairobi and other emerging African megacities: sources, sampling, and solutions.

This was the second session from our ‘Healthy Cities’ webinar series that focused on air pollution especially in sub- saharan Africa.

Spearheaded by Dr. Daniel M. Westervelt who is currently an Associate Research Scientist at Columbia University’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York. The panel consisted of 4 members respectively;

• Dr. Godwin Opinde who is a Lecturer at the Department of Environmental Planning & Management, Kenyatta University.
• Priyanka deSouza, a PhD candidate at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning working on air pollution,
• Prof. Michael J. Gatari who lectures and supervises students undertaking master of Science in Nuclear Science and technology, multidiscipline graduate program at the University of Nairobi,
• Dr. Darby Jack who is an Associate Professor at Columbia University Medical College, Department of  Environmental Health Sciences.

The webinar panel discussed some emerging efforts to rectify the large air pollution data gap using surface monitoring, remote sensing, and air quality modeling, with a focus on Nairobi. The webinar panel also discussed solutions and pathways forward for reducing the health burden from air pollution in Africa focusing its facts on air pollution causing millions of premature deaths and a host of illnesses in the world’s cities each year.

This millions of premature deaths according to the discussions are especially true in sub-Saharan Africa, where sparse air pollution monitoring imparts high uncertainty to estimates of exposure and impact. Highlighted from the discussions also is that over five hundred million African children live in areas with no reliable air quality monitoring and this plays a great role in contributing to their premature deaths.

 Apart from discussing some emerging efforts to rectify this large air pollution data gap using surface monitoring, remote sensing, and air quality modeling, with a focus on Nairobi. The panelists from this webinar also discussed solutions and pathways forward for reducing the health burden from air pollution in Africa.