World pollution more deadly than wars, disasters, hunger

INDIA: Environmental pollution – from filthy air to contaminated water – is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined.

One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015 – about 9 million – could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major study released yesterday in The Lancet medical journal.

The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some US$4.6 trillion in annual losses – or about 6.2 per cent of the global economy.

``There’s been a lot of study of pollution, but it’s never received the resources or level of attention as, say, Aids or climate change,’' said epidemiologist Philip Landrigan, lead author on the report. The report marks the first attempt to pull together data on disease and death caused by all forms of pollution combined.

``Pollution is a massive problem that people aren’t seeing because they’re looking at scattered bits of it,’' Landrigan said.

Experts say the 9 million premature deaths the study found was just a partial estimate, and the number of people killed by pollution is undoubtedly higher and will be quantified once more research is done and new methods of assessing harmful impacts are developed.

Areas like Sub-Saharan Africa have yet to even set up air pollution monitoring systems. Soil pollution has received scant attention. And there are plenty of potential toxins still being ignored, with less than half of the 5000 new chemicals widely dispersed since 1950 having been tested for safety or toxicity.