Nine out of 10 people breathe harmful air
MORE than 90% of the global population lives in a place where the air does not meet World Health Organisation (WHO) safety guidelines, says a WHO study that warns of a “public health emergency” created by rising pollution levels.
The most detailed research on outdoor pollution in individual countries undertaken by the WHO, a UN agency, shows that about 3-million deaths a year can be linked to dirty air from coal-fired power plants, old cars, factories and other sources.
Millions more are affected by smoke inside their homes from stoves or fires fuelled with wood or dung, which means 6.5-million deaths were associated with air pollution in 2012, the agency says.
“Air pollution continues to rise at an alarming rate and affects economies and people’s quality of life. It is a public health emergency,” the study says.
An interactive map drawn by the organisation based on data from satellites as well as ground air monitors reveals stark disparities among countries’ levels of particulate matter, one of the most dangerous forms of air pollution.
Tiny particles no bigger than 2.5 micrometres, known as PM2.5, can penetrate deep into the lungs and cardiovascular system. WHO guidelines say annual average concentrations should not exceed 10 micrograms per cubic metre.
That limit is met in much of the US, Canada and other industrialised countries such as Australia and New Zealand. But many places in Europe including parts of the UK, France and Germany, have air that exceeds WHO limits for PM2.5, even though the EU is widely regarded as a pioneer of environmental policies.
More than 90% of the UK’s population lives in areas in which levels of air pollution exceed the WHO’s limits, according to the study’s model, which was developed with an international team of scientists led by the University of Bath.
The higher levels of pollution in Europe could be attributed to the number of EU countries that had encouraged the use of diesel cars compared with North America, says Annette Pruss-Ustun, a co-author of the WHO study.
“Certain countries have a relatively old diesel car fleet that is heavily polluting,” she said. “In North America, they have fewer diesel cars.”
Pruss-Ustun said countries around the world were spending millions of dollars each year treating lung disease, heart attacks and strokes worsened by air pollution and much of this money could be saved if governments cracked down on soot and smog.
While the WHO data pinpoints big cities such as Delhi in India, where PM2.5 levels were 122 micrograms per cubic metre, and several Chinese cities, it shows pollution is also dangerously high in countries across the Middle East and North Africa.
In many cases, that is the result of natural causes such as dust storms, rather than factories or cars. The Financial Times Limited 2016(c)