Human Dimensions of Air Quality: Introduction to the Special Issue

Abstract

Poor ambient air quality is one of today’s greatest environmental health risks. However, unlike water, wildland fire, or wildlife, comparatively less human dimensions scholarship has focused on air resources. The papers in this special issue highlight how people across varying cultures, geographies, and identities create and relate to varying air quality conditions. In doing so, the issue challenges dominant perspectives of air pollution as a purely material entity and argues for the need to attend to the socio-cultural and political dimensions that define, create, or mitigate poor air quality.