Underprivileged people exposed to high pollution in urban Canada

NEW DELHI: A new research by the University of British Columbia found that different marginalised groups of Canada are highly exposed to air pollution in Vancouver, Montreal and Toronto. The study, published in Environmental Research Letters, found that local residents are more exposed while the burden falls on immigrant and low-income residents in Montreal and Toronto, respectively.

Dr Amanda Giang, Assistant Professor, Institute of Resources, Environment and Sustainability, said that to look at visible minorities as one group will ignore a lot of variations that different racialised groups are experiencing. Historically, neither scientific studies nor Canadian policy-makers have been good at fighting with the nature of environmental impacts on an average. A key contribution of the study is the development of cumulative indicators of air pollution hazard, data on pollutants including fine Particulate Matter (PM), nitrous oxide and ozone.

The researchers have found that people of Canada are exposed to various kinds of air pollutants at a time and it is viable to consider average health impacts of various kinds of pollutants.