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ATmong the myriad injustice and threats to humanity, air pollution is a newcomer that is still struggling to make a real mark in the scrap for the public's finite emotional bandwidth.
While Victorian-era smog is still commonplace in industrializing giants like India and China, we're going to be stuck behind an idling black cab.
This is the fatal factor that makes many of our challenges a reality.
Meanwhile, we are in the process of making the most of our benefits and making them easier.
Last week the World Health Organization (WHO) warned this "complacency was shortening millions of lives" and likened the air pollution crisis to the fight against smoking.
A WHO report on Monday said air pollution is "uniquely damaging" to children, and that 93 per cent of under-15s on earth are breathing unsafe levels of pollutants on a daily basis.
This impact is disproportionately affecting developing nations. Over 40 percent of the world – a billion under-15s – are exposed to poisonous fumes at home where unventilated wood and coal fires are the mainstay of cooking and heating.
Poorly ventilated cooking spaces increased risk of carbon monoxide poisoning, particularly at lower levels where children play,
Air pollution from traffic is believed to cost the UK nearly £6bn every year (Getty)
Meanwhile population booms and industrialization have created choking megacities, like Delhi, Beijing, and – closer to home – London.
In wealthier nations, diesel cars are public enemy number one, idling outside schools and snarling the streets. These vehicles produce levels of nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter (microscopic specks of soot, ammonia and other pollutants that coat the lungs and can enter the bloodstream).
There is abundant evidence that these pollutants can cause bronchitis, asthma and pneumonia.
Their impact is also growing in the womb, and the growth of infant mortality increases, cognitive development disorders and even leukemia.
Oxford University academics linked to air pollution to around 40,000 premature deaths a year, compared to 98,000 a year from smoking.
But unlike smoking, these pollutants have the ability to affect populations in the next road.
Greenpeace mapped satellite-tracked nitrogen dioxide emissions from summer 2018 with sources of air pollution (Greenpeace)
A report by Greenpeace on Friday.
The ominous map that results shows London's transport miasma is only beaten into second place in Europe by Germany's Niederaussem power station – while China's glows a deep red from countless coal plants.
Meanwhile the UK, German and French governments have been taken to the EU's highest rate of their failure to act on it's high pollution levels earlier this year.
The UK government's begrudging commitment to phase out polluting diesels by 2040 has also made its fanatical zeal for earthquake-inducing, environmentally devastating fossil fuel extraction by fracking. While in the US the trump administration is rolling back restrictions on coal-fired power plants.
With new technology to help us visualize the creeping spread of pollution, and science shedding light on its harms, air pollution is invisible impact.
That can nudge individual choices on how we travel, or save energy, but it will only be a difference if governments begin to think it's something that will be at the polls.
