Millions die from air pollution every year in the world

It's not marked on death certificates, but it's still considered “one of the great killers of our time”.

A thick mist spread over New Delhi as winter began in India last year, forcing medical professionals to announce a public health emergency. Residents filled local hospitals with complaints of respiratory problems. The cricket players were forced to wear anti-polluting masks during a national match between India and Sri Lanka, while United Airlines cancelled flights to the city, citing concerns about air quality.

Air pollution is not one cause of death that medical examiners list on death certificates, but health conditions related to exposure to air pollution, such as lung cancer and emphysema, are often fatal. Air pollution was responsible for 6.1 million deaths and represented about 12 per cent of the global deaths in 2016, the last year for which data was available, according to the Institute of Medicine and Health Education at the University of Washington.

<x0.>The air plan is one of the great killers of our time”, wrote Philip Landrygan of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in an article published in the medical journal The Lancet.

India's late Environment Minister Anil Greatav Dave made a fuss last year denying there was evidence that air pollution was responsible for deaths in India. Dave acknowledged that air pollution “could be one of the driving factors for disease and disease associated with breathing”, but he blamed the negative health effects on other issues: poor diet, professional risks, socioeconomic situation and genetics, writes The Huffington Post.

Dave died in May 2017 of a heart attack. The new Minister of Environment, Harsh Vardhan, also said “per citing death to any cause such as pollution, this could be excessive”.

However, there are numerous studies that link air pollution and disease worldwide, the newspaper Express broadcast.

“There is a large amount of data linking air pollution in nature to undesirable health effects, including acute and chronic diseases, worsening chronic diseases and death”, Dr. Barry Levy, public health professor from Tufts University Medical School.

According to IHME, of 6.1 million deaths from air pollution in 2016, 4.1 million are attributed to air pollution. Such pollution comes from sources such as vehicles, coal power plants and steel factories. Air pollution from homes, or indoors, is a more pressing problem in low income countries because of the use of house fires for cooking and heating and has to do with about 2.6 million deaths per year.