US Embassy air-quality tweets led to global health benefits

Akshaya Jha and Andrea La Nauze

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022, vol. 119, issue 44, e2201092119

Abstract: Over 4 million premature deaths per year are attributed to air pollution, most of which are in low- and middle-income countries where residents do not have access to reliable information on air quality. We evaluate a large-scale program that provided real-time air-quality updates at over 40 US diplomatic sites around the world with poor preexisting monitoring. We find that the embassy monitoring program led to substantial reductions in fine particulate concentration levels, resulting in substantial decreases in the premature mortality risk faced by the over 300 million people living in cities home to a US embassy monitor. Our research indicates that monitoring and information interventions that draw attention to poor air quality in developing countries can generate substantial benefits.

Keywords: air-quality monitoring; information interventions; local air pollution; fine particulates; developing countries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.pnas.org/content/119/44/e2201092119.full (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nas:journl:v:119:y:2022:p:e2201092119

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences from Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Bibliographic data for series maintained by PNAS Product Team ().