Air pollution ‘pandemic’ shortens lives by 3 years: Study

paris — A ‘pandemic’ of air pollution shortens lives worldwide by nearly three years on average, and causes 8.8 million premature deaths annually, scientists said.

Eliminating the toxic cocktail of molecules and lung-clogging particles cast off by burning oil, gas and coal would restore a full year of life expectancy, they reported in the journal Cardiovascular Research.

“Air pollution is a larger public health risk than tobacco smoking,” lead author Jos Lelieveld of the Max Planck Institute in Mainz, Germany said.

“Much of it can be avoided by replacing fossil fuels with clean renewable energy.” Compared to other causes of premature death, air pollution kills 19 times more people each year than malaria, nine times more than HIV/Aids, and three times more than alcohol, the study found.

Coronary heart disease and stroke account for almost half of those deaths, with lung diseases and other non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and high blood pressure accounting for most of the rest. Only six per cent of mortality stemming from polluted air is due to lung cancer.

“Our results show there is an ‘air pollution pandemic’,” said senior author Thomas Munzel of the Max Planck Institute’s departments of chemistry and cardiology.

The worst-hit region is Asia, where average lifespan is cut 4.1 years in China, 3.9 years in India, and 3.8 years in Pakistan.

In some parts of these countries, toxic air takes an even steeper toll, other research has shown.

In India’s Uttar Pradesh — home to 200 million — small particle pollution by itself slashes life expectancy by 8.5 years, while in China’s Hebei Province the shortfall is nearly six years, according to the Air Quality Life Index, developed by researchers at the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago.

African lives are foreshortened by 3.1 years on average, with people in some nations — Chad, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, Nigeria and Cote d’Ivoire — losing 4.5 to 7.3 years. Among wealthier nations, the Soviet Union’s former satellite states have the deadliest pollution, especially in Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania. —