Pollution killed 9 million in 2015, says study
LONDON: Pollution claimed the lives of nine million people in 2015, one in every six deaths that year, according to a report published yesterday.
Almost all the deaths, 92 per cent, happened in low- and middle-income countries, it said, with air pollution the main culprit, felling 6.5 million people.
Almost half of the total toll came from just two countries — India and China — researchers reported in The Lancet medical journal.
In rapidly-industrialising countries such as India, Pakistan, China and Bangladesh, pollution could account for as many as one in four deaths, they added.
With global welfare losses of about US$4.6 trillion (RM19.4 trillion) per year, the economic cost of pollution-related deaths and disease is also concentrated in the developing world.
“Proportionally, low-income countries pay 8.3 per cent of their gross national income to pollution-related death and disease, while high-income countries pay 4.5 per cent,” said the researchers. But, there was some good news in the report.
Deaths due to water and household air pollution dropped from 5.9 million in 1990 to 4.2 million in 2015, said the report, as poor countries became richer.
On the other hand, deaths from pollution associated with industrial development, such as outdoor air pollution, chemical and soil pollution, increased from 4.3 million to 5.5 million over the same period.