Pollution is an existential threat to modern society, one which endangers both human and planetary health. It includes contaminating the air with ozone, sulfur, nitrogen-containing nitrous oxides, and delicate particulate matter (PM2.5). Reduction of air pollution is a key aspect of Green Growth, which, together with attaining the goals of the Paris Agreement, could save around a million lives a year worldwide by 2050 (Rijsberman, 2019).

Lead contamination has been estimated to account for around 900,000 deaths per year worldwide (IHME, 2019). Typically developing countries suffer the most, where the use of lead in paint and other household products is often not fully regulated or controlled.

Excessive tobacco consumption is an important public health policy issue. According to estimates by the World Health Organization (WHO), 32% of the adult population in Georgia smoked tobacco in 2019 (WHO, 2021). The prevalence of smoking in men was 56.9 percent – the fourth in the world and first in Europe.

Over the last half-century, air pollution has become an increasingly critical problem globally. The number of harmful emissions connected to human activity has been rising constantly, and, in many locations around the world, the concentrations of individual pollutants are higher than the recommended safe levels. Elevated emission levels are associated with various harmful effects, such as damage to human health and well-being, decreases in productivity, a reduction in land prices, and equally significantly global environmental issues like climate change.

In 2000, the International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted Convention No. 183, better known as the Maternity Protection Convention. The purpose of the Convention was to protect the health and safety of mother and child and to promote the equality of all women in the labour force. Essentially, this short document sets several guidelines, or minimum standards, that ought to be implemented globally for pregnant women and working mothers to be adequately protected in the labour market.