“If the projected increase in mortality attributable to air pollution is to be avoided, intensive air quality control measures will be needed, particularly in South and East Asia“, wrote the researchers, led by Jos Lelieveld of Germany’s Max Plank Institute for Chemistry.
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Seventy-five percent of all air pollution mortalities occur in Asia.
Agricultural emissions are becoming increasingly important but are not regulated, said Allen Robinson, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who wasn’t part of the study but praised it.
Apparently nuclear plant emissions or vehicle exhausts for that matter do not play a significant role in the global air pollution.
The northeastern USA , across all of Europe, Japan, Russian Federation and South Korea, the No. 1 cause of smog and soot deaths is agriculture, according to this new study. The work did not include the effect of indoor air pollution, from cooking fires for example, which is estimated to cause an additional 3.4 million deaths a year. India ranks second with 645,000 deaths, even as Pakistan slips to the third position, with 110,000 air pollution-related premature deaths annually.
What is unusual is the study says that 16,221 deaths were caused by agriculture with only power plants causing more deaths. Around the world, agriculture is the No. 2 cause with 664,100 deaths, behind more than 1 million deaths from in-home heating and cooking done with wood and other biofuels.
Ammonia from fertilizers and animals drifts into cities and is a key ingredient in producing ozone and microscopic pollutants known as fine particulates that damage the heart and lungs, Lelieveld said in an conference call with reporters.
“We were very surprised”, he said of this anomaly, “but in the end it makes sense”. According to Lelieveld, scientists had expected that traffic and power plants to be the biggest culprits when it concerns worldwide deaths in air pollution, but their assumptions were wrong.
“Our goal now is to ensure that the affected cars are brought into compliance, to dig more deeply into the extent and implications of Volkswagen’s efforts to cheat on clean air rules, and to take appropriate further action”, said Air Resources board exec officer Richard Corey. West and others said it’s likely that some places, such as China, will dramatically cut their air pollution by 2050. In much of the West, traffic emissions are tragically breaking records.
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Researchers from Germany, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia, and Harvard University reached this number after one of the most comprehensive air pollution studies to date.
