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Air pollution poses a serious threat to public health worldwide, with approximately 2000 children losing their lives daily due to health issues linked to poor air quality.
In 2021 air pollution was responsible for 8.1 million deaths globally accounting for about 12% of all fatalities, as reported by the Health Effects Institute (HEI) based in the United States.
The HEI report (written in partnership with UNICEF for the annual State of Global Air Report) stressed the damaging effects of air pollution on children.
In 2021 alone, more than 700,000 children under the age of five died because they breathed toxic air. More than 500,000 of these deaths were due to the use of dirty indoor cooking fuels such as coal, wood, or dung, and the highest percentages could be found in various parts of Africa and Asia.
The new study states that air pollution is the second greatest cause of premature death in the world, only second to hypertension, but ahead of tobacco use and diet.
According to the report, the really frightening thing is that over 90% of these deaths due to pollution are caused by fine particulate matter which can lead to lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and a host of other severe health problems.
Pallavi Pant, who heads the Health Effects Institute, reminds us that these are solvable problems, yet virtually everyone in the world breathes unsafe air every single day.
She also mentioned how the report only focuses on disease rates in relation to air pollution levels, but that the overall effects, especially those pertaining to mental health and neurodegenerative diseases, are probably grossly underrepresented in the report.
The report also blames ozone pollution, which will be worsened by climate change, for nearly 500,000 deaths last year.
