If reducing fine particles is so beneficial, it would surely be more transparent and efficient to target them directly.
Fine particles can be inhaled into the airways and cause irritation.
One study by the American Cancer Society found that death rates from lung cancer increased 6% for every additional 10 microgrammes of fine particles in a cubic metre of air.
Professor Harrison said that based on the Americn study, it was possible that fine particles could cause as many as 3, 910 deaths from lung cancer in the UK each year.
About the same size as fine particles of cigarette smoke, the grains are made of silicate minerals and carbon-based materials coated with ice - principally water ice and frozen carbon monoxide.
They have shown that emissions of nitrous oxides (NOX) and sulphur oxides (SOX) combine with gases already in the atmosphere to create very fine particles that are especially dangerous to human health.
Professor Roy Harrison, a member of two UK government advisory committees on air pollution, said US research had provided strong evidence that fine particles contained in emissions from vehicles and industry caused cancer.
The Swach's cartridge, a key component of the system, resembles Edison's electric bulb and is made up of a composite of rice-husk ash (a highly porous material derived out of paddy husk) and fine particles of nano-silver, which inhibits bacteria growth.
Consider, for example, a spate of new studies that have found a rather convincing correlation between the presence of small particulate matter (PM2.5, the fine particles blown into the air by road traffic, coal-fired power plants, industrial manufacturing, and residential wood fuel combustion) and both obesity and diabetes.
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Although he offers some points of light -- putting an aerosol layer of fine particles into the stratosphere to reflect back sunlight may, he says, could buy us some time by slowing down the rate of decline for a decade -- his projections are on the whole brutally pessimistic.
Fully two-thirds of the benefits of economically significant final rules reviewed by OIRA in 2010 were thanks to reductions in fine particles brought about by regulations that were actually aimed at something else, according to Susan Dudley of George Washington University, who served in OIRA under George Bush (see chart).
Levels of nitrogen dioxide and fine dust particles emitted will be analysed.
The inhalation of these fine dust particles represents a health hazard that was known to the military as long ago as 1974.
"Transport and industrial emissions generate smog that destroys sensitive tissues (in people and animals), as well as producing fine carcinogenic particles that reduce lung function, and are ultimately responsible for many untimely deaths each year, " Manins wrote in the report.
When he shone a light up through it, he could see fine-grained particles of silica, known as chert, mixed in with what looked like coal.
The enormous shroud of fine mineral dust particles now stretches from the Arctic Circle in the north to the French Mediterranean coast in the south, and from Spain into Russia.
Tiny particles of rock ground fine by the glaciers that feed it turn the water milky and give it this astonishing, alien colour.
Filter material: layer of fine gravel used in slope stabilization structures that allows water to escape and retains soil particles.
The radii of the suspended particles are measured in millionths of a metre, so if they can be controlled, fine structures can be built up.
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