Global pollution kills 9 million people a year

As shown in a new study, pollution causes 9 million fatalities worldwide each year, with the death toll due to polluted air from cars, trucks, and industries increasing by 55 per cent since 2000.

Total pollution deaths in 2019 are nearly the same as in 2015, attributed to fewer pollution deaths from primitive indoor heating systems and water polluted with sludges.

According to a new study published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health, the United States is the only fully developed nation in the top 10 countries for overall pollution mortality, ranking 7th with 142,883 deaths blamed on pollution in 2019, trapped between Bangladesh and Ethiopia.

The pre-pandemic estimate released on Tuesday is based on statistics from the Global Burden of Disease database and Seattle’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. With over 2.4 million and approximately 2.2 million deaths per year, respectively, India and China lead the country in pollution mortality, but they also have the world’s largest populations.

The Ranking is 31st from the bottom in terms of pollution deaths per 100,000, with 43.6 deaths per 100,000. Chad and the Central African Republic have the highest pollution fatality rates, around 300 per 100,000, with more than half of these owing to contaminated water, whereas Brunei, Qatar, and Iceland have the lowest, ranging from 15 to 23 per 100,000. The global average is 117 fatalities per 100,000 persons due to pollution.

According to the survey, pollution kills mostly the same majority of individuals each year around the world as nicotine and environmental tobacco combined.

Study says:

“9 million deaths is a lot of deaths,” said Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Public Health Program and Global Pollution Observatory at Boston College.

“The bad news is that it’s not decreasing,” Landrigan said. “We’re making gains in the easy stuff and we’re seeing the more difficult stuff, which is the ambient (outdoor industrial) air pollution and the chemical pollution, still going up.”

They are preventable deaths. Every one of them is an unnecessary death,” said Dr Lynn Goldman, dean of the George Washington University School of Public Health, who wasn’t part of the study. She said the calculations made sense and if anything. Was so conservative about what it attributed to pollution, that the real death toll is likely higher.

The death certificates for these people do not mention pollution. Epidemiologic studies have “tightly connected” heart disease, strokes, lung disease, other lung issues, and diabetes with pollution, as seen by Landrigan. Researchers look at the number of fatalities by cause, pollution exposure weighted for various parameters, and then intricate externalizing problems calculations produced to match these with actual deaths.

Air pollution in New Delhi, India, increases in the winter season, with only a couple of days this year after the city’s atmosphere was not rated unhealthy. It was the first time the city had a fresh air day since the fall and winter in 4 years.

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