Air. We can’t live without it.
But millions of people around the world can’t live with it, either — because of pollution caused by coal, gasoline and other fossil fuels.
A new study has found that such air pollution caused 8.7 million deaths in 2018, the most recent year for which sufficient data is available.
That’s one in every five people who died that year.
And it’s “far higher than previously thought,” reports the Reuters news agency; more than double, in fact. Another study just a year earlier “put the annual number of deaths from all outdoor airborne particulate matter — including dust and smoke from agricultural burns and wildfires — at 4.2 million.”
Unsurprisingly, countries with the highest consumption of fossil fuels for factories, homes and vehicles suffered the most.
It’s worst in eastern Asia, particularly parts of China and India, but the northeastern United States is also among the regions most severely polluted, according to the study published Tuesday by the journal Environmental Research.
“An average of more than 30% of deaths in adults aged 14 and over in Eastern Asia are attributable to pollution from fossil fuels,” reports the Guardian.
The percentage of deaths in the next highest region, Europe, was just over half that: 16.8%. Canada and the U.S. follow on the list and are roughly equal at 13.6% and 13.1%
“The enormous death toll is higher than previous estimates and surprised even the study’s researchers,” the Guardian says.
“We were initially very hesitant when we obtained the results because they are astounding, but we are discovering more and more about the impact of this pollution,” said Eloise Marais, an expert in atmospheric chemistry at University College London, and a co-author of the study.
Researchers at Harvard University and three British universities contributed to the project.
“Burning fossil fuels such as coal and oil produces greenhouse gases that trap solar radiation in the atmosphere and cause climate change,” CNN reports. “But it also releases tiny poisonous particles [that can] penetrate deep into the lungs.”
Such particles can aggravate respiratory conditions like asthma and can lead to lung cancer … heart disease, strokes and early death. Separate researh “has also found a link between higher levels of long-term pollution and more deaths from Covid-19,” CNN says.
“We hope that by quantifying the health consequences of fossil fuel combustion, we can send a clear message to policymakers and stakeholders of the benefits of a transition to alternative energy sources,” Joel Schwartz, an environmental epidemiologist at Harvard and a co-author of the study, told Reuters.