India, China pushed to act on polluted air

Death rates to rise without action: report

NEW DELHI — Never mind lowering the rate of death from air pollution in India and China. Just keeping those rates steady will demand urgent action to clear the skies, according to a report published Tuesday.

The findings — gleaned from a new global model for how changes in outdoor air pollution could translate into changes in disease rates — highlight a demographic quirk of Asia’s two fastest-growing economies, where young populations have so far kept pollution-related mortality relatively low even amid breakneck economic development at steep environmental cost.

Both countries have looked to coal-fired power plants to boost electricity and fuel growth. Both have seen explosions in the number of vehicles on the roads. And both have hundreds of millions of impoverished people still relying on burning wood, kerosene or whatever they can grab at the garbage dump to build fires for cooking or keeping warm on winter nights.

But as their populations age, more people will become susceptible to conditions such as heart disease, cancer or stroke that are caused or exacerbated by air pollution.

Already, Asian nations led by India and China account for 72 per cent of the total 3.7 million annual deaths from outdoor air pollution — more than AIDS and malaria combined.

Neither nation is anywhere near meeting air quality guidelines set by the World Health Organization. In India, pollution levels are still on the rise.

“The impact of particulate air pollution on preventable deaths is far larger than most people realize,” said Howard Frumkin, dean of the University of

“The opportunity for preventing premature deaths by cleaning up the air is enormous... especially in China and India.

HOWARD FRUMKIN

ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SPECIALIST

Washington’s School of Public Health and an environmental health specialist who was not involved in the study.

In fact, if the entire world brought pollution levels down to WHO recommended levels, 2.1 million premature deaths could be prevented each year, according to the study, which was published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

India and China would need to reduce average levels of tiny, inhalable particulate matter called PM 2.5 by 20 to 30 per cent merely to offset their demographic changes and keep mortality rates steady, the study shows.

That still won’t get them to the WHO’s recommendation of 10 micrograms per cubic metre, but it could help avoid several hundred thousand premature deaths every year.

“The opportunity for preventing premature deaths by cleaning up the air is enormous ... especially in China and India, where pollution levels are high and the exposed populations large and densely concentrated,” Frumkin said.

The WHO last month declared air pollution the world’s largest single environmental health risk, and pledged to come up with a global plan to start cleaning up the skies within a year.

Ultimately, though, it will be up to national governments to act.