A View of New Delhi, India, Photograph: Louis Dowse/Corbis
(Note to readers: Yesterday Lefty Coaster and I published about this report at about the same time. Actually, mine may have been just a little before his, but I thought his was better written, and it definitely had better pictures, so I took mine down. Given how important this topic is I hope you do not mind me giving the deaths of 7 million/year of our global citizens a little more attention. We need a better global response to environmental threats. Perhaps, I could please ask you to rally a little community support an go rec his excellent post as it was vastly under attended for such a vital topic and it should be on the rec list. Thank you.)
The World Health Organization's latest report has found that air pollution 'is single biggest environmental health risk', causing 7 million deaths a year. To put this in perspective, this is approximately one out of every eight deaths.
Surprisingly, to me, more people were killed from indoor pollution than outdoor pollution, 4.3 million and 3.7 million, respectively. The explanation is that in poor countries people spend more time indoors "breathing in smoke and soot from leaky coal and wood cook stoves," which has been more strongly linked to heart disease and stroke.
Around 80% of the 3.7 million deaths from outdoor pollution came as a result of stroke and heart disease, 11% from lung diseases and 6% from cancers. The vast majority were in Asia, with 180,000 in the Americas and Europe combined, said the WHO.
Indoor air pollution led to 4.3 million deaths, of which 34% were caused by strokes, 26% heart diseases and 12% respiratory disease in children. Only 19,000 of these deaths were in rich countries, with the vast majority being in low- and middle-income countries. Because many people are exposed to both indoor and outdoor air pollution, the WHO said deaths attributed to the two sources cannot be added together.
The WHO also found that South-East Asia is the most polluted region of world due largely to "explosive" economic growth in China and India.
Another surprising finding of this study is that although researchers have found a significant increase in auto pollution, most of the large increases in the air pollution related deaths were due to improved understanding of the health impact of air pollution on respiratory illness, strokes and heart attacks.
Air pollution is estimated to cause 200,000 premature death a year in the US.
In Europe, poor air quality is the top environmental cause of premature deaths in the EU, causing more than 100,000 premature deaths a year and costing from £300bn-£800bn a year in extra health costs, said Janez Potočnik, the EU environment commissioner.
This study confirms what our intuitions tell us -- regulations to reduce air pollution are not "wasted and unnecessary expenses forced on us by faceless government officials," but rather "wise and intelligent investments for the common good" we wisely choose and that have a high return on investment both measured in human lives and economic return.