Air

The air quality in Cairo is not good. My gym is on a houseboat on the Nile, and I run on the treadmill looking at a smokestack billowing thick black smoke. The sky is not blue, but gray. The air smells of filth, and while on crowded roadways with buses and diesel cars, it is tough to breathe at all. Problems range from industrial pollution and lots and lots of old cars to many tall buildings causing a bowl effect, and its hot arid climate. 

One of the biggest problems with evaluating Cairo's air quality is the lack of solid data. The existing data are sketchy to begin with, as they measure pollutants with only forty-odd stations in and around the city. In addition to being unreliable, the data are too recent to be in any way helpful. The systems were set up in the late 90's (with help from a Japanese advisory council), and air quality data begin becoming available around 2001. There is no way to create policy, let alone evaluate its effectiveness with 8 years of sketchy data. Preliminary studies place Cairo's air as some of the dirtiest in the world, comparable with that of Mexico City, Sao Paolo, and Bangkok, all three of which are more than twice as dirty as Los Angeles or Pittsburgh (which consistently pitch battle for the title for "American City with the Dirtiest Air"). 

The main pollutants are hydrocarbons, particulate matter, and lead, all of which can cause cancer, the particulate matter because of the solid and liquid carcinogens it can carry. I suspect that there is a lot of natural particulate matter (sand, dust, etc), which because of poor dispersion due to its climate, would be tough to regulate down. The primary issues associated with particulate matter are breathing problems such as asthma and decreased lung function. Lead, which has been regulated down to extra-cautious levels throughout the United States with the requirement of unleaded gasoline, can cause cancer and fatal neurological problems. Again, this is just a suspicion, but I would be willing to bet that with an overhaul of the automobile fleet, this problem would be largely alleviated, much like it was in the States. Hydrocarbons are a little tougher to track down, and the United States has had varied success trying to keep its hydrocarbon levels down in industrial areas. 

The United States only had success in cleaning its air (and for those unfamiliar with it, the Clean Air Act is the best example of successful environmental legislation) not just because of government action, but because it became socially unacceptable to pollute air in any way (where else in the world can you NOT smoke inside??) People cite the old cars and the desert as factors in Cairo's dirty air, but I have to consider the political influence of the rich and unclean. The socio-economic system here caters to the rich, and I can't imagine that industry polluting everyone's air for a pretty penny is any different. 

Some sources cite the air quality in Cairo as 100 times higher than acceptable world standards. This makes the health risks for its citizens high and dire, with numbers being thrown around such as 1 in 30 people experiencing serious adverse health affects (as a general rule of thumb, the EPA looks to regulate when the risk is any higher than 1 in 1,000,000). Cairo's filth is going to be detrimental to its citizens, if it's not already, but dirty air is the kind of problem that is alleviated only with social cooperation and a wider reform. I don't know what the future of Cairo's air is, and from a broad environmental regulatory standpoint, they are 30 years behind the United States. In order for the future of Cairo to include blue sky, they need more ways to evaluate the problems, better ways to regulate the pollution, more stringent requirements that are followed by everybody, and a general social desire for clean air.