What are super pollutants and why are they a problem?
Super pollutants are powerful gases and particles that rapidly heat the planet and harm human health. Many super pollutants – such as methane, black carbon and ground-level ozone – drive air pollution, either directly or indirectly. Sources of these health-harming super pollutants and their precursors include large vehicles and engines, gas leaks, burning fossil fuels and biomass, agriculture, food waste in landfill sites and more.
Why we're concerned about super pollutants
Every year, millions of premature deaths around the world are linked to both black carbon (or soot) and ground-level ozone – a key component of smog for which methane is an important precursor. These potent air pollutants have a wide range of health impacts, including worsening asthma and other breathing and lung conditions, especially in children, older people and people with pre-existing health conditions. The wider health impacts of air pollution cost the UK £50 billion every year.
With a super-charged ability to trap heat, super pollutants are major contributors to climate change. Tonne for tonne they have a warming effect greater than carbon dioxide, and together are responsible for around 45% of the global heating we’ve experienced so far.
They can also damage crops, for example ground-level ozone contributes up to 26% of annual losses in yields of staple crops such as wheat, rice, maize and soy, contributing to food insecurity and undernutrition.
What we can do about this
The good news is that reducing super pollutants has almost immediate benefits, improving air quality and health, and slowing the heating of our planet. This is because many super-pollutants are short-lived, meaning that they only stay in the atmosphere for a matter of days, weeks or years.
There are already proven solutions such as low emission zones in cities, moving to more sustainable transport and reducing the amount of organic waste going to landfill. Cutting methane emissions by half could reduce the global temperature by 0.3°C, with a big impact on our climate. This could also prevent 260,000 premature deaths and 25 million tonnes of crop losses annually. Reducing global carbon dioxide emissions is still vital but tackling super pollutants can support and complement these actions.
We fund research to better understand the health impacts of super pollutants and how reducing them can benefit health. We have supported research into super pollutants and asthma, heat and air pollution impacts on brain health, impacts of emissions from key sources such as oil and gas supply chains and livestock systems, the economic and social costs of carbon and more.
Super pollutants explained
Learn more about super pollutants and why they are one of our priorities.
Carbon dioxide isn’t the only thing to blame for climate change. In this explainer video, campaigner and environmental scientist Laura Anderson picks apart the three main super pollutants that every country should focus on – joined by Professor Drew Shindell and Assistant Professor Jonathan Buonocore.
Pressing play on the video above will set a third-party cookie. Please read our cookie policy for more information.
Research we’ve funded
Explore examples of research projects we’ve funded around the health effects of super pollutants and solutions to protect people.
Air pollution and dementia: cardiovascular pathways, population impact and potential for prevention
Emerging evidence shows that air pollution is a likely risk factor of cognitive decline and dementia. This project will focus on cardiovascular pathways, the impact of air pollution on dementia at population level, and estimating the potential benefits of air pollution control in dementia prevention in England and Wales.
Yuntao Chen
University College London, United Kingdom
Lung development: the effects of the herbicide, linuron and black carbon on fetal development
This project will characterise the effects of an environmental contaminant, the herbicide linuron, on human fetal ovarian development. Additionally, I will publish results from an innovative study exploring the effects of air pollution black carbon nanoparticle proximity in human fetal lungs.
Laetitia Lecante
University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom
Climate, economics and health: Adding air quality impacts into the social cost of carbon estimates
This project will look into how air quality impacts, for example on health, can be used to estimate the social cost of greenhouse gases. It will aim to define how temperature affects concentrations of pollution, which impacts should be included and which changes in health impacts can be attributed to climate-related changes in air quality.
Kevin Cromar
New York University, United States
Cities: Methods and tools to integrate air quality and health into urban climate action planning
Many actions to mitigate greenhouse gas also benefit air quality and health but assessment of these co-benefits has been limited. Our work will build a bridge between scientific evidence on co-benefits and the largest urban climate action planning effort worldwide – C40 Cities. This will create a platform to study more cities and enable health co-benefits to be integrated into climate action planning in cities, long term.
Susan Anenberg
George Washington University, United States
Green spaces, air pollution and climate-related heat deaths in Latin American cities
The health impact of extreme heat events will increase with climate change and rising urban populations. This project will examine the impact of climate change, particularly extreme heat events, on urban population mortality and the modifying effects of green space and fine particulate matter. The aim is to provide evidence of health effects of a climate adaptation and mitigation strategy in the face of future heat waves.
Daniel Rodriguez
University of California, Berkeley, United States
Predicting asthma exacerbation-risk from exposure to indoor air pollutants
In recent years, indoor air pollutants, known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) have been linked with worsening of asthma. VOCs are often present in common household products such as domestic cleaning products and fragrances. This project will characterise the links between specific VOCs and health effects using a new open-source Lung CHEMistry model in Python which will be developed.
Helen Davies
University of York, United Kingdom
Reports
Read our published reports on climate and health.
Watch
video duration
Item 1 of 3
Pressing play on the videos will set a third-party cookie. Please read our cookie policy for more information. If no video is displaying you may need to be logged into a Google account to watch YouTube.
Contact
Ryan Leung
Research Manager
Wellcome
Scarlett Quinn-Savory, Research Manager
To get in touch or for information email:
