Pollution the worst killer in the world

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 this week in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses — or about 6.2 percent 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, dean of global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. Landrigan is the lead author of the report.

Experts say the 9 million premature deaths represent just a partial estimate, and that the number of people killed by pollution is undoubtedly higher.

Areas like Sub-Saharan Africa have yet to even set up air-pollution monitoring systems. Soil pollution has received scant attention. And there are still plenty of potential toxins being ignored, with less than half of the 5,000 new chemicals widely dispersed throughout the environment since 1950 having been tested for safety or toxicity.

Asia and Africa are the regions putting the most people at risk, the study found, while India tops the list of individual countries.