WASHINGTON: More than 3 million people die each year because of air pollution, and industrial nations have it the worst, because farming is an important factor in smog and soot deaths.
Calculated the most accurate estimates to date, researchers from Saudi Arabia, Germany, Cyprus, and Harvard University have collaborated on a project that sought to determine what caused air pollution. One of the most worrisome conclusions was that – provided nothing changes in trends – the annual death total will double by 2050.
Published Wednesday in the journal Nature, the study is based on computer models and health statistics. Heart attacks and stroke account for roughly three quarters of the deaths, according to senior author Jos Lelieveld with the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany.
Experts who didn’t participate in the study concur that the team’s findings are mirrored by other less-detailed pollution death estimates. Jason West, a professor of environmental sciences at the University of North Carolina, said that ambient air pollution causes approximately 6 percent of all premature global deaths. This figure has exceeded any prediction experts might have made 10 years ago.
Air pollution is a powerful killer, taking a larger toll than malaria and HIV combined, Lelieveld added. China holds the infamous record in air pollution fatalities with almost 1.4 million deaths a year, seconded by India with 645,000, and then Pakistan with 110,000.
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