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March 16, 2019 – 13:17 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net – Air pollution cause more deaths than smoking and almost double the number of deaths researchers had previously thought, according to the New York Post, citing a new study.
Published in the European Heart Journal, the report found that 8.8 million people died of air pollution in 2015, while previous estimates predicted only 4.5 million deaths.
"To put this in perspective, it means that air pollution causes more deaths a year than smoking, which, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), would have caused 7.2 million more deaths in 2015. Smoking is preventable, but not air pollution. ", Said in a statement Professor Thomas Münzel of the Department of Cardiology of the University Medical Center Mainz in Germany and co-author of the study.
"The number of deaths from cardiovascular disease attributable to air pollution is much higher than expected. In Europe alone, the excessive number of deaths is nearly 800,000 per year and each of these deaths represents an average reduction in life expectancy of more than two years, "he added.
It is obvious that air pollution is linked to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, said Münzel. He added that air pollution increases oxidative stress and damages blood vessels, causing an increase in blood pressure, diabetes, stroke, heart attacks and heart failure.
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