Air pollution kills nearly nine million people a year

Air pollution kills about 8.8 million people a year, almost double the previous estimate, and now kills more than just smoking.

This is the disturbing finding of research conducted by researchers led by Jos Lelieveld of the Max Planck Institute of Chemistry and published in the European Heart Journal.

To make their conclusions, the researchers reassessed the mortality modeling in Europe in 2015 and found that deaths from ambient air pollution – resulting from fuel and biomass consumption, fuel consumption and fuel consumption – were the main reasons for this. industry and agriculture – had been significantly underestimated.

Air pollution is defined as a fine particulate matter in the atmosphere that, at chronic levels of exposure, is known to impair vascular function, which is related to heart disease, heart failure, hypertension and strokes.

Looking at the figures for Europe, Lelieveld concluded that air pollution in the year in question had caused around 790 000 deaths, including 659 000 in the 28 Member States of the European Union.

Extrapolating to the rest of the world, the researchers achieved an annual global death toll of 8.8 million, well above the previous estimate of 4.5 million.

"To put this in perspective," says co-author Thomas Münzel, "this means that air pollution causes more additional deaths a year than smoking, which according to the World Health Organization. Health, reportedly caused an additional 7.2 million deaths in 2015.

"Smoking is preventable, but not air pollution. The number of deaths from cardiovascular disease attributable to air pollution is much higher than expected. "

The researchers estimated that each of the pollution-related deaths represented a decrease in life expectancy of about two years. Worldwide, air pollution has caused an additional 120 deaths per 100,000 population.

The researchers add that many, if not most, of the deaths caused by pollution could be avoided by reducing the amount of particulates in the atmosphere. They emphasize that the best way to achieve this is obvious.

"Since most particulate matter and other air pollutants in Europe come from burning fossil fuels, we have to turn to other sources to generate energy urgently," Lelieveld said. .

"When we use clean and renewable energies, we are not just complying with the Paris Agreement on Mitigating the Effects of Climate Change, we could also reduce mortality rates from air pollution in Europe." up to 55%. "