Last year, I visited a friend in Kano, one of Nigeria’s fastest-growing cities. The air felt dry and dusty, but not particularly smoky or smoggy. I assumed, like many people do, that if I couldn’t see or smell pollution, the air couldn’t be that bad. But I was wrong. A groundbreaking 2025 study from The Lancet Planetary Health has made me—and many scientists—rethink what we know about air pollution. The study, by Chi Li and a global team of researchers, focused on PM1 pollution: ultrafine particles that are smaller than 1 micron in diameter. Unlike the more commonly monitored PM2.5, PM1 is small enough to penetrate not just your lungs, but your bloodstream and even your brain. This stuff isn’t just a lung problem—it’s a whole-body problem. And for cities like Kano, it may be the most overlooked environmental health threat we face today. PM1: The Invisible Danger To put this into perspective: A human hair is about 70 microns wide. PM2.5 (which most air monitors track) is 2.5 microns or ...
Science, Soil, and Soul.