Aethra: Carcinogens inhale - look before your leap!

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“Delhi will record world's largest number of premature deaths due to air pollution”, The. Times of India ... https://aqicn.org/sources/ Retrieved on 5th January 2017.
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Aethra: Carcinogens inhale - look before your leap! Introduction and Motivation: In twenty first century tech savvy peoples are moving towards urban life for livelihood and better lifestyle. The general tendency is to migrate from the country life to the city life; the middle of this current century the number of people in India is expected to touch 843 million that is more than the rural area, whereas Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata will be accommodated average 37 million peoples (Daniel Hoornweg & Kevin Pope, January ’14) by 2050 [1]. So rising demands of the people may be impacted on various socio-economic developments or public health. Air pollution is one of the critical issues often it may be a vital symptom for inadequate urban city planning. Premature mortality is the one of the serious facts for the forthcoming decades due to the air pollution. In Delhi, around thirty thousand people will die due to inhaling polluted air by 2025; that the number will be highest among all the mega cities in the world but Kolkata will reach around fifty five thousand early deaths by 2050 which will be the highest record in the world (K Sinhal, TOI September ’15) [2]. Vehicular based air pollution is the biggest contributor to the premature deaths in the world. When fuel is burned or air/fuel residuals are emitted through vehicle tailpipe; carbon monoxide, benzene, nitrogen oxides and various detrimental air pollutants are produced and mixed into the air; causes environmental air pollution. More pollutants due to vehicle emissions are affected on the lung tissue, asthmatic problems for long time exposure or chronic heart diseases. The expert panel of International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) decided that the outdoor air pollution can cause cancer [3]. Additionally, experts of IARC have also concluded that the presence of Particulate Matter (PM) in air causes cancer for the urban people [4]. Moreover high concentrations of ozone near ground level can be harmful to the people when hydrocarbons react with oxides of nitrogen in the presence of heat and sunlight. Ozone may also cause chronic lung diseases such as bronchitis, emphysema or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and also several respiratory diseases. Furthermore too much ultraviolet radiation from sun can damage DNA in our skins which lead to skin cancer [5]. It is the best time to concern on human health otherwise the number of premature deaths in the Asiatic countries from the exposure to the outdoor air pollution will outstretch the standard limit by the next couple of decades. From the statistical fact there will be around 635 million internet users in India by 2021. It is a common medium for exposing the air quality information to the crowd so that the common people will get this information through their portable smart devices. Common urban people will take the necessary action according the helpline conveyed through those apps. The detailed system overview has showed in Figure 1. To keep this fact in mind people now develop different Internet of Things (IoT) enabled smart devices which will concern the common people to take the necessary actions in support of their free movements. “Aethra-Evergreen Sky” is a planned ZigBee based smart IoT device (Figure 2 a.) which can be sensed necessary information of indoor/outdoor air quality which can be mounted on the public transports such as buses of any urban city service buses. The city routes/bus stops are connected with ZigBee transceiver nodes that can be forwarded this air quality information to the intended cloud server through ZigBee gateway. This live air quality information then publishes on the public social Figure System Overview network. Technology Used: According the Environmental Protection Agencies (EPA), only 9,000 out of 20,000 air quality stations in the world are published the information of World Air Quality Index [6]. Due to the public demands zone level air quality monitoring is also onerous work for the forthcoming decades. “Aethra-Evergreen Sky” would be the

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planned solutions for air quality monitoring, live weather publishing of the urban city area especially at the important road traffic junction points (Figure 2 b.). Pros and Cons: There are several advantages and disadvantages for using Aethra smart unit. Pros: a. Common people have acquired the air quality information visually. No more study is need to be required to operate it b. No individual cost is needed to get this information c. Altruistic peoples might even bypass the polluted routes which help us for “Green Routing” d. Reduce to inhale carcinogenic pollutants that might be helped the people to avoid from various chronic diseases Cons: a. One time infrastructure costs and life-time maintenance costs are needed to enable this device b. High speed internet service is required for better performance of this application c. Only web-enabled phone users can get information about the air quality of the outdoor environment d. Each users or subscribers require a valid email address to support this application Results and Conclusion: Aethra portal supports Marker map based GUI to notify their user (Figure 2 b). Sensor information can be visually and textually displayed along with their standard limit. Based upon the information user will alert and take necessary actions. User can easily identify the less polluted roads so they are avoiding higher pollution. Aethra would be helpful for urban citizens especially for elderly people, pregnant mother and school pool car services. The day isn’t so far when the city will be enabled by hi-speed wireless networks (3G/4G/LTE/WiMAX); then the Aethra will give support to the urban citizens for healthy long life.

Figure 2 a) “Aethra-Evergreen Sky” - Smart Unit

Figure 2 b) Aethra Web Portal

References [1] Hoornweg, D. Pope, K. “Socioeconomic Pathways and Regional Distribution of the World’s 101 Largest Cities”, Global Cities Institute Working Paper No. 04, pp. 1 - 119, 2014. [2] Sinhal, Kounteya. “Delhi will record world’s largest number of premature deaths due to air pollution”, The Times of India, 2015. [3] Gaudin, N. “IARC: Outdoor air pollution a leading environmental cause of cancer deaths”, International Agency for Research on Cancer, PRESS RELEASE N° 221, pp. 1 - 4, 2013. [4] Straif, K. Cohen, A. Samet, J. “AIR POLLUTION AND CANCER”, International Agency for Research on Cancer, IARC Scientific Publication No. 161, pp. 1 - 169. [5] Patrick, D. L. Sullivan, R. Murray, T. P. Kimmell, K. “Health & Environmental Effects of Air Pollution”, Dept. of Environ. Prot., MassDEP, pp. 1 - 3. [6] Environmental Protection Agencies. “World-wide Air Quality Monitoring Data Coverage”, https://aqicn.org/sources/ Retrieved on 5th January 2017.