Socio-economic aspects of air pollution

Abstract

It may be said that the central socio-economic problem posed by air pollution stems from the circumstance that the perpetrators are seldom the sufferers. Aggravating the problem is the fact that our knowledge of the quantitative behaviour of air pollutants is quite inadequate. Thus pollution from vehicular exhausts affects the pedestrian and passengers in cars following the pollutant vehicle which speeds ahead immune to its own exhaust. The emission of smoke from industrial furnaces pollutes inhabitants living in the vicinity but not the people working in the air-conditioned guilty factory. In such circumstances, the interplay between social and economic cost and benefit arising out of air pollution becomes unusually complex. It is rendered more intricate by the cumulative causality one notices in social life, whereby the combined interaction of given social and economic factors accelerates the movement of the socio-economic system from initial equilibrium towards ecological imbalance.