PM10 and PM2.5

information that empowers individuals to adopt behaviors that avert problems (such as avoiding exposure on particularly bad days, using air purifiers, wearing masks, and so forth). Exposure avoidance is particularly important for sensitive groups (such as asthmatics or people with other respiratory diseases such as COPD)—who, by reducing their exposure, can also reduce the negative health effects significantly.

Despite the importance of monitoring, many Middle East and North Africa economies lag other regions of the world in this regard because the region has a low number of ground monitors to measure PM compared with the monitors in East Asia, Europe, Latin America, North America, and South Asia (Shaddick et al. 2018), as shown in map 3.1.

Know the Sources

To prepare effective pollution abatement programs, the first and foremost question is, “What are the sources?” Especially in this section about policy measures for “blueing” the Middle East and North Africa’s skies, the importance of knowing the sources of air pollution in a given country, city, or other area becomes apparent. Without such knowledge, a worstcase situation arises in which expensive pollution abatement measures are

MAP 3.1

Global Distribution of Ground Monitors for Measuring PM10 and PM2.5

Source: Shaddick et al. 2018. License: Creative Commons Attribution CC BY-NC 4.0. Note: Circles denote ground monitors for PM2.5, crosses for PM10. Colors denote the annual average PM2.5 concentrations in μg/m3 (micrograms per cubic meter of air), converted from PM10 where PM2.5 data were not available. Data are from 2014 (46 percent); 2013 (36 percent); 2012 (9 percent); and 2006–11 and 2015 (9 percent total for these last two time periods). PM2.5 is particulate matter (PM) of 2.5 microns or less in diameter, whereas PM10 is 10 microns or less in diameter.