When air and water are killers
This appeared in the Washington Post:
A major study published last month in the Lancet, a British medical journal, found that there is a global killer responsible for more yearly deaths than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined: pollution.
The problem is pervasive, affecting every country on the planet. It is expensive, costing the globe a whopping $4.6 trillion a year — about six per cent of global gross domestic product — in hours not worked, premature deaths, health spending and eroded quality of life. The study associated pollution with one in six premature deaths, nine million people in 2015. Even if the numbers are off a bit, the magnitude is striking.
Air pollution is the leading culprit, linked to 6.5 million deaths, followed by water pollution, with 1.8 million. Harmful particulates, toxic chemicals and smog-forming gases result from fuel burning, from primitive dung-fired cooking stoves to massive coal-burning power plants. These and other forms of pollution promote asthma, heart disease, stroke, lung cancer and other maladies. Premature death is only one problem. Long-term impairment before death also results in human misery and material impoverishment. Developing nations, many of which lack strong environmental enforcement, are much worse off than developed countries, the study found. Poor and middle-income nations account for 92 per cent of the premature deaths globally. Pollution drives a quarter of deaths in some lower-income countries.
The study’s authors argue that this human toll is not the inevitable price of development, nor a problem that will simply disappear with growth; countries should not “wait for an economy to reach a magical tipping point that will solve the problems of environmental degradation and pollution-related disease,” they write. Poor countries struggling to pull their citizens out of abject poverty may yet find it tough to take the long view. The Lancet study should remind leaders everywhere that, though there are costs associated with restricting pollution, countries also incur costs by failing to do so.
Finding the right balance requires acknowledging both sides and weighing them carefully.