Air quality and human health in urban settlement: case study of Kuala Lumpur city / Assoc. Prof. Sr Dr. Ting Kien Hwa and Oliver Ling Hoon Leh

Population growth and urbanisation are potentially affecting the urban environmental quality and human health. Human health is influenced by his action and decision in the era of global urbanisation. This study was carried out to understand the "chain of causality" between human activities and air emission, as well as air quality and human health. Environmental health indicators were reviewed and selected for this study with Kuala Lumpur city as case study. Environmental health was defined as "human health and disease" that are determined by factors in the environment and "environmental conditions" which affect the quality of health. Through the environmental health indication work, air quality level of the city and the air-borne health condition of residents were analysed. From the case study, the relationship between urban parameters, air quality and airborne health were found to have strong and significant relationships; even though air pollution is a trans-boundary issue. Research has shown that, city landuses and traffic generation in a city affect its air quality level (number of unhealthy days as measured in API) and its residents' health. Therefore, the environmental healthiness of a city lies on the human hands of the city itself. Smart growth, compact development and mixed use shall be the ways for city development in order to reduce traffic volume and pollutant emission, preserve more forest, environmental sensitive area and food production land, and really put human beings at the centre of concerns for sustainable development as stated in Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.