1) Many things can help lessen or prevent air pollution. We can plant more trees to help rid the atmosphere of the harmful gasses our factories release. We can reduce the number of smoke-emitting factories. Use solar power more too.
2) Air pollution affects our health in many ways. Just as smoking a cigarette can pose major health implications, so can breathing the polluted air that is constantly being release by all our cars and other machinery. Our life-spans can be shortened by the pollution, and more diseases could be caused to outbreak by harmful chemicals in the atmosphere.
Hope this helps :)