World Health Organization (WHO) 84d ago

The air you breathe matters 😮‍💨 Did you know? 99% of the global population breathes air that exceeds WHO pollution limits. Here, we’re looking at something that can’t be spotted with the naked eye and that impacts millions of lives every single day. Nitrogen dioxide (NO₂). NO₂, shown here in global average values, is a harmful air pollutant mainly produced by traffic, industry, household energy use, and power generation. Breathing in this gas can harm your health and increase the risk of circulatory and respiratory diseases (for example: chronic respiratory diseases and asthma), also cancer. From space, satellites — such as Copernicus Sentinel-4, Sentinel-5P (which measured the data shown in this video) and Sentinel-5 map — show NO₂ across the globe and reveal pollution patterns in near real time. These insights help scientists and policymakers better understand air quality and drive informed decisions, also helping organizations like the WHO to set guidelines for reducing air pollution. This is science and health in action working towards clean air for all. 📹 contains @copernicus_eu Sentinel data (2025), processed by @europeanspaceagency; @creativecommons BY-SA 3.0 IGO #StandWithScience