Air pollution kills more people every year than Aids and malaria combined, warns new research.
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Improving air quality – in clean and dirty places – could potentially avoid millions of pollution-related deaths each year. 2 million deaths annually have been traced again to pollution from illnesses like lung most cancers, coronary heart assault, melanoma and stroke. But the researchers recommend a solution – adapting the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines over 2.1 million deaths can be prevented.
While other research has examined the health impacts of breathing polluted air, this is the first to analyze how and where modifying air quality can improve health.
They come from burning coal in coal-fired power plants, from auto exhausts and industrial emissions. “We consider our mannequin might assist in designing methods to shield public wellbeing”, said lead writer Dr. Joshua Apte from the University of Texas.
As a nation grows, pollution goes along with it. Climate change is already heating the world and we all experience its effects through the rise in temperature, more so is its influence on our health.
It was found that most people across the world live in areas with particulate matter concentrations far above the WHO’s prescribed limits of 10 micrograms per cubic meter.
The study confirmed promising potential to reduce deaths as a result of pollution particularly on these dense locations.
“We were surprised to find the importance of cleaning air not just in the dirtiest parts of the world-which we expected to find-but also in cleaner environments like the USA, Canada and Europe”, Julian Marshall, an associate professor at the University of Minnesota and a co-author of the study, said in a statement.
The study says that meeting the guidelines could prevent up to 1.4 million deaths each year in heavily-polluted areas like China and India.
“We wanted to determine how much cleaner different parts of the world would need to be in order to substantially reduce death from particulate matter”.
Dr. Marshall said another important finding was that because of ageing populations, health risks in many countries will increase even if pollution levels are constant.
[…] As their populations age, more people will become susceptible to conditions such as heart disease, cancer or stroke that are caused or exacerbated by air pollution.
If that’s not enough fodder for fist shaking, here’s one more: A recent study shows that the youths of China and India are too damn healthy (for now) to feel all the deadly side effects of the horrific pollution that they breath every day.
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