Talk:Air pollution

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Air pollution has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
July 12, 2025	Good article nominee	Listed

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on August 1, 2025.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ... that air pollution (example pictured) increases the risk of miscarriages, strokes and dementia?

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How could this article connect better to the country-specific articles?

There are quite a lot of country-specific articles called things like Air pollution in the United States/Canada/Germany/South Korea/Turkey... and so on around the world. But there is no clue that these articles exist from our main Air pollution article. Even if you expand the "Pollution" template at the bottom of the page, you don't find a list of the country articles. How could we improve this? Amend the template? Add in a category? 45154james (talk) 07:59, 12 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I copied the world topic from the US article - but I don’t understand templates so no doubt it can be improved Chidgk1 (talk) 17:30, 23 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That's perfect, thank you! I didn't know you could do that. It just needs the red link removing, but I'm not very good with templates either so I will leave it alone. 45154james (talk) 17:22, 26 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think I've fixed it. I think the template needs both prefix= (mandatory) and title = (optional) to be specified in this case. 45154james (talk) 13:01, 27 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So it's not under construction anymore? ~2026-16177-67 (talk) 19:26, 14 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Articles on Wikipedia constantly change and new viewpoint are added, dated information is removed and people improve the article. This one is pretty stable as a WP:good article. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:29, 14 March 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Darth Stabro talk 20:18, 21 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(

Comment or view
Article history

)

Air pollution by a brick factory

... that air pollution increases the risk of miscarriages, strokes and dementia?

Source: Breathing polluted air for months or years can .. increase the likelihood of adverse birth outcomes, including preterm births, stillbirths, and miscarriages .. air pollution accounts for 48% of global deaths from COPD, 28% of deaths from IHD, 27% of deaths from stroke, 19% of deaths from lung cancer, and 18% of deaths from type 2 diabetes, Study after study has shown that higher levels of air pollution are correlated with increased risks of dementia

ALT1: ... that air pollution is responsible for over a quarter of deaths from coronary heart disease and one in five lung cancer deaths? Source: air pollution accounts for 48% of global deaths from COPD, 28% of deaths from IHD, 27% of deaths from stroke, 19% of deaths from lung cancer, and 18% of deaths from type 2 diabetes
Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Winters v. New York

Improved to Good Article status by Femke (talk). Number of QPQs required: 1. Nominator has 14 past nominations.

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:20, 12 July 2025 (UTC).[reply]

@Femke: Article is newly made into a GA, hook is interesting. The citation regarding miscarriages isn't placed on the end of the sentence though. I think that'll be the only issue that needs to be addressed. Arconning (talk) 04:38, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I always forget about that silly rule. Thanks Arconning, all fixed now. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 06:56, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
- Approved. :) Arconning (talk) 08:57, 13 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

WP:V issues

Looking at the "Pregnancy and children" there seem to be a bunch of claims sourced to a landing page for a UNICEF report, which does not satisfy the requirements of WP:V. What gives? Bon courage (talk) 16:41, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's one of those annoying reports that downloads, rather than opens, when you click it (giving like a C:// 'url'). I'm giving page numbers, so I hoped it was clear that the readers needs to click on the report to go the the actual pages. Is there a better way to format that citation? Or are you able to find a direct link to the report? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:25, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What I could do is convert the entire article to my preferred citation style. That is: sfns for reports and books, 'normal' citations for all the other sources. (like what I'm starting at polycystic ovary syndrome). That way, the page numbers are more obvious? —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:31, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have no objection to changing the referencing style, but in the short-term this link to the PDF (assuming this one is meant) works, and the format=pdf paramater can be used in reference for completeness. Bon courage (talk) 01:21, 23 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of Interest and Promotional Concerns

WP:Sockpuppet investigations/Dustfreeworld. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (they|xe|🤷) 11:16, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

I would like to raise a potential conflict of interest regarding the Air pollution article.

This page is significantly expanded in the last few months by user Femke who is associated with a European-based grant-receiving institute that focuses on action-oriented research in areas such as climate change, alternative energy use, electric vehicle deployment, climate intervention, and carbon emissions. This suggests that the article may have been edited to promote or publicize activities in these areas. This user's edit history also appears to be focused on promoting or defending narratives in these areas.

Concerns include:

Fact picking and failure to assign due weight to viewpoints. Selecting information without including contradictory or significant qualifying information and consequently misrepresenting what the source says. For more description: Wikipedia:Coatrack#Fact picking, Wikipedia:Cherrypicking.

Use of publications from think tanks and activists, such as the Mercator Research Institute, as source for unusual claims.

Lack of coverage from reliable, secondary and latest sources that would demonstrate neutrality.

Given this pattern, I recommend:

A review of the article for neutral tone and promotional content,

Careful scrutiny of fact picking, source reliability, source misrepresentation and the use of advocative source,

Considering whether tags for COI, NPOV, or Undisclosed paid are appropriate.

Thank you to any experienced editors who can review and advise on how best to address these issues. Battlefortheconscience (talk) 04:58, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Battlefortheconscience Unless Femke has publicly disclosed this somewhere on Wikipedia, this would constitute outing. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 05:01, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest you take a closer look at their user page and our outing policy. Thanks. Battlefortheconscience (talk) 05:24, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well, there's this: I support User:TatjanaBaleta, who works as a Wikimedia Visiting Fellow at the University of Exeter, as part of my job. I will generally not edit directly for this project, but will be organising a edit-a-thon as part of the module I teach, and may improve edits from students. If you have any concerns over this (This user's edit history also appears to be focused on promoting or defending narratives in these areas), I would take it to the conflict of interest noticeboard instead of pointing it out here. Children Will Listen (🐄 talk, 🫘 contribs) 05:28, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

COI and NPOV tags added

WP:DNFT. Bon courage (talk) 05:43, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Added and tags to the article (August 2025) following concerns raised here, at COIN, and at NPOVN. Further discussion welcome. Battlefortheconscience (talk) 05:26, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I do not think that these tags are appropriate here - especially the first one, as air pollution is not a company or person. Do you have specific examples/sentences of these? DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 05:35, 3 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

What are the ranges of common air pollutants?

This article on Air Pollution is very informative. However, I think readers, like me, would really appreciate if it included a readily accessible list of the Range of common air pollutants.

Many days, when the National Weather Service notifies us [-- for me, through Apple's iPhone Weather App] of an "Air Quality Alert," the potentially noxious air components are listed, but without information on the Good and Dangerous ends of the range. For example, today in NYC:

CO Carbon Monoxide 933 ppb NO2 Nitrogen Dioxide 44 ppb N0 Nitrogen Monoxide 79 ppb NOx Nitrogen Oxides 118 ppb O3 Ozone 3 ppb PM 10 Particulates Under 10 mu m 41 mu g/m3 SO2 Sulfur Dioxide 1 ppb

An example of what I now consider gold standard for reports format to ID what I'm suggesting: My Blood Work (like those from Quest Diagnostics), give the standard or reference ranges of blood components beside the value in my current blood test report.

I don't know if this suggestion of an addition to this article fits in the interests of any Volunteer, but I thought I'd ask since I turn to Wikipedia all the time. I'd love to add a Bookmark on an article that had this reference.

Best to you all. And thank you for all you do! ~2026-10935-37 (talk) 22:49, 18 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not super interested in editing the article itself but I was curious enough to do a few minutes research. I found these W.H.O. guidelines that you could use to edit it yourself:

https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240034228 (click on the executive summary)
https://www.who.int/data/gho/data/themes/air-pollution
https://www.c40knowledgehub.org/s/article/WHO-Air-Quality-Guidelines?language=en_US

Ask if you want help with wiki formatting.

Anecdotally, when I lived in Hong Kong in the 1990s, the weather report would list which suburbs were within the WHO guidelines as green and others as orange or red - about half were orange or red. Stepho talk 23:58, 18 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]