Worldwide Air Pollution Kills 3.3 Million People Annually

According to Allen Robinson, an engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon University, who wasn’t part of the study, agricultural emissions are becoming more and more significant here but are not regulated. Scientists at Harvard University and in Saudi Arabia, Cyrus and Germany calculated estimates that are the most detailed to date of the overall toll that air pollution creates and looked at what caused it. The study projects as well that if the trends do not change, the death toll annually will double to over 6.6 million per year in the next 35 years.

“This is an astounding number, ” said Jos Lelieveld of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, who led the research. “This number is higher than most experts would have expected, say, 10 years ago”, said Jason West, a professor of environmental science at the University of North Carolina. The findings are consistent with other studies that examined the effects of air pollution on health and mortality across the globe. India is at second position with over 654,000 deaths and its neighbor Pakistan, is at third, with over 110,000 air pollution-related deaths per annum.

The US, with 54,905 deaths during 2010 from smog and soot, is the seventh highest for deaths due to air pollution. Worldwide, agriculture is the No. 2 cause with 664,100 deaths, just after the 1 million deaths from in-home heating and cooking done with wood and other biofuels in developing world. That ammonia then combines with sulfates from coal-fired power plants and nitrates from vehicle exhaust to form the soot particles that are the big air pollution killers, he said.

In addition, study team leader Johannes Lelieveld says, “We find that emissions from residential energy use such as heating and cooking, prevalent in India and China, have the largest impact on premature mortality globally”.

Reducing air pollution is not only good for public health, it’s good for the climate too. The other 25% air pollution-related deaths are due to lung cancer and respiratory diseases, according to Lelieveld.

“Our goal now is to ensure that the affected cars are brought into compliance, to dig more deeply into the extent and implications of Volkswagen’s efforts to cheat on clean air rules, and to take appropriate further action”, said Air Resources board exec officer Richard Corey. “Much of the agricultural emissions that are being inhaled in a city like London are actually originating from outside the city”.

Natural air pollution, mostly dust in arid regions, caused nearly a fifth of global air pollution deaths.

And Lelieveld said that if the world reduces a different air pollutant – carbon dioxide, the main gas causing global warming – soot and smog levels will be reduced as well, in a “win-win situation in both directions”.