Data Programming

Homework 4

Author

Emilija Petrovska

Published

May 19, 2024

Environmental Pollution and Public Health

Introduction

Environmental pollution poses a significant threat to public health, with many factors which contribute to serious health outcomes. We will look at the relationships between environmental pollution and public health, explore its sources and effects on human health.

Understanding Environmental Pollution

Environmental pollution is a direct outcome of human activities,which affect various factors like air quality, water purity, soil health, and food safety. Industrial activities release harmful substances such as chemicals, heavy metals, and particulates into the air and water, while transportation contributes exhaust gases like nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide.(Shafi (2005))

Types of Environmental Pollution

  1. Air Pollution: Contamination of the environment by chemical physical of biological factors which manipulate the atmosphere.(Brunekreef and Holgate (2002))

  2. Water Pollution: The release of harmful substances in groundwater, lakes, rivers, estuaries and oceans which interfere with the ecosystem. (Britannica, 2024)

  3. Soil Pollution: The presence of toxic chemicals in soil which pose a risk to the ecosystem. (Environmental Pollution Centers, 2024)

Air Pollution Analysis

For better understanding of this issue, let’s look into some detailed information of the presence and effects of air pollution on a global level.

library(readr)
library(kableExtra)
airpollution<-read.csv("global_air_pollution_dataset.csv")
airpollution %>%
  head() %>%
  kable() %>%
  kable_styling(bootstrap_options = c("striped","responsive"))
Country City AQI.Value AQI.Category CO.AQI.Value CO.AQI.Category Ozone.AQI.Value Ozone.AQI.Category NO2.AQI.Value NO2.AQI.Category PM2.5.AQI.Value PM2.5.AQI.Category
Russian Federation Praskoveya 51 Moderate 1 Good 36 Good 0 Good 51 Moderate
Brazil Presidente Dutra 41 Good 1 Good 5 Good 1 Good 41 Good
Italy Priolo Gargallo 66 Moderate 1 Good 39 Good 2 Good 66 Moderate
Poland Przasnysz 34 Good 1 Good 34 Good 0 Good 20 Good
France Punaauia 22 Good 0 Good 22 Good 0 Good 6 Good
United States of America Punta Gorda 54 Moderate 1 Good 14 Good 11 Good 54 Moderate

Data set provided by: https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/hasibalmuzdadid/global-air-pollution-dataset

Here is the city with the greatest level of air pollution, measured by the AQI Index. The AQI Index goes from 0 to 500 with values below 50 meaning good air quality and over 300 representing hazardous air quality.

highestAQI<-max(airpollution$AQI.Value)
city_w_highest_AQI<-airpollution$City[highestAQI]
city_w_highest_AQI
[1] "Develi"

The city of Develi, Turkiye has an AQI of:

highestAQI
[1] 500

Below are calculated the percentages of each AQI category such as good, modarate etc, which descriptively demonstrate the level of air pollution. It is then displayed graphically as a ggplot (See Figure 1) and then as a table (See Table 1).

categories<-table(airpollution$AQI.Category)
categorypercent<-prop.table(categories)*100

percentdata<-as.data.frame(categorypercent)
percentdata$category<-rownames(percentdata)
library(ggplot2)
ggplot(percentdata,aes(x=Var1,y=Freq))+
  geom_bar(stat = "identity",fill="purple")+
  labs(title= "Percentages of AQI Cateogories", x= "AQI Category", y="Percenage")+
  theme_minimal()

Figure 1: ggplot
library(kableExtra)
percentdata %>%
  kable() %>%
  kable_styling(bootstrap_options = c("striped"))
Table 1: CategoryPercentage
Var1 Freq category
Good 42.3475259 1
Hazardous 0.8140476 2
Moderate 39.3427950 3
Unhealthy 9.4915399 4
Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups 6.7808891 5
Very Unhealthy 1.2232025 6

Calculating Water Pollution

Moving on to the second type of pollution we will look into the Water Quality Index, which can be computed with the following formula:

\[WQI=\sum_{i=1}^{n} W_i \cdot Q_i\]

where:

  • Wi = weight to the i-th water quality parameter

  • Qi = Quality rating of the i-th parameter

  • n = the number of parameters

Soil Pollution

library(knitr)
knitr::include_graphics("https://www.iberdrola.com/documents/20125/40615/suelo_746x419.jpg/0c7d2a0c-f3a8-0ec0-9ad7-61f7fbf023b6?t=1627531595008")

Figure 2: SoilPollution

References

Brunekreef, Bert, and Stephen T Holgate. 2002. “Air Pollution and Health.” The Lancet 360 (9341): 1233–42.
Shafi, S. M. 2005. Environmental Pollution. Atlantic Publishers & Distributors (P) Limited. https://books.google.si/books?id=bd8UxaeRFmgC.