worldwide die prematurely every
year due to household and outdoor air pollution, and India and China together account for
55 percent of these deaths, new
research has found. About 1.6 million people died of air pollution in China and 1.4 million died in India in 2013, the
researchers said. The
international team of
researchers from India, China,
Canada and the US estimated
that despite efforts to limit future emissions, the number of premature deaths linked to air
pollution will climb over the next
two decades unless more
aggressive targets are set. The findings were presented on
Friday at the 2016 annual
meeting of the American
Association for the
Advancement of Science
(AAAS) in Washington, DC. "Air pollution is the fourth
highest risk factor for death globally and by far the leading
environmental risk factor for
disease," said Michael Brauer,
professor at University of
British Columbia's School of
Population and Public Health in Vancouver, Canada. "Reducing air pollution is an
incredibly efficient way to
improve the health of a
population," Brauer noted. Power plants, industrial
manufacturing, vehicle exhaust
and burning coal and wood all
release small particles into the
air that are dangerous to a
person's health. In India, a major contributor to poor air
quality is the practice of burning
wood, dung and similar sources
of biomass for cooking and
heating. Millions of families, among the
poorest in India, are regularly
exposed to high levels of
particulate matter in their own
homes. "India needs a three-pronged
mitigation approach to address
industrial coal burning, open
burning for agriculture, and household air pollution sources," Chandra Venkataraman,
professor at Indian Institute of
Technology Bombay, in
Mumbai, India, said. In China, burning coal is the
biggest contributor to poor air quality. Outdoor air pollution from coal alone caused an
estimated 366,000 deaths in
China in 2013, Qiao Ma, a
doctoral student at Tsinghua
University in Beijing, China,
noted. Ma also calculated the expected
number of premature deaths in
China in the future if the country
meets its current targets to
restrict coal combustion and
emissions through a combination of energy policies
and pollution controls. She found that air pollution will
cause anywhere from 990,000
to 1.3 million premature deaths
in 2030 unless even more
ambitious targets are
introduced. "Our study highlights the urgent
need for even more aggressive
strategies to reduce emissions
from coal and from other
sectors," Ma said.
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