Environmental pollution causes more deaths in the world than the coronavirus

Since the pandemic began two and a half years ago, covid has already taken the lives of more than six million people in the world.

According to a new report from

Commission on Pollution and Health , different types of environmental pollution cause the premature death of nine million annually.

This represents one in six deaths globally in a year and is more than the sum of all deaths in 2019 attributed to war, terrorism, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and drug and alcohol use.

Paradoxically, despite the enormous health impact of such pollution being known, the work published in

highlights how little progress has been made in reducing the number of deaths from this cause in the last five years.

These nine million premature deaths were estimated using 2019 data from the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study and are the same number as those calculated in a previous review of the effects of pollution using figures from 2015. The numbers haven't changed much.

As the report specifies, in this time the deaths caused by the oldest types of pollution have been reduced (such as contamination within homes due to the use of firewood or coal, or water contamination), but at the same time they have increased those caused by other more modern forms of poisoning, linked to development and industrialization (such as those caused by motorized traffic or toxic chemicals).

"The example of the coronavirus shows us that many deaths can be avoided when decisions are made," says Rachael Kupka, one of the authors of the report and director of the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution (GAHP).

“As human beings, we are not good at dealing with future problems, we are better at responding to emergencies, but with pollution, prevention is the most important thing.”

Of the different types of pollution analyzed, the work published in

calculates that the one that causes the most annual deaths is air (6.67 million deaths), followed by water (1.4 million), caused by lead (200,000) or toxic chemicals at work (870,000).

However, as Kupka points out, other key pollutants have been left out, so the number of deaths from environmental pollution would be even higher than nine million.

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In the case of lead, not all possible forms of poisoning with this heavy metal are evaluated.

Mainly, the one related to its use in gasoline is analyzed, today already prohibited throughout the world, after the last country where it was still allowed, Algeria, stopped doing so in 2021. Likewise, the report has not measured the number of human deaths caused by pesticides, mercury, cadmium, endocrine disruptors... "Some experts consider that chemical pollution may be as important as air pollution," says the director of GAHP.

"We don't know, but what is clear is that the impact of this kind of invisible pollution is being underestimated."

low income countries

Another key fact of the work is that more than 90% of deaths related to pollution occur in low- and middle-income countries.

This plague, as happens so often, does not affect the rich as well as the poor.

Not in vain, in the most developed countries, greater progress has been made against pollution.

For this reason, the experts who have participated in the report regret that pollution is being largely ignored in the international development agenda and criticize that the financing for this problem has only increased minimally since 2015.

According to Philip Landrigan, another of the study's authors and director of the Global Pollution and Health Observatory at Boston College, "pollution remains the greatest existential threat to human and planetary health and endangers the sustainability of modern societies."

At this point, the work considers it essential to seek synergies to fight against pollution, climate change and the loss of biodiversity at the same time.

As Landrigan underlines: "Pollution prevention can also slow climate change, achieving a double benefit for the health of the planet, and our report calls for a massive and rapid transition from all fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy."

Likewise, humans are not the only ones affected by this cocktail of pollutants, so its reduction would also be good news for other species on the planet.

In general, pollution is perceived as a local problem, affecting a specific city, a river or a population.

However,

report also draws attention to the fact that this is increasingly a planetary challenge.

As Kupka points out, "pollution is crossing borders and is even entering the global food system, as is the case with some heavy metals and arsenic."

"Contamination is spreading through international trade, and we cannot stop trade, but we can act at the point of origin," says the director of GAHP, who calls for a global response to this problem that, apart from causing many deaths, it has many other effects on human health and cognitive development.

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