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Air pollution in India: outdoor traffic, indoor coal stoves
Photo: Salman Ali / Hindustan Times / IMAGO
Clean air keeps people healthy longer.
This is shown once again in an international study in which experts from the Ludwigs-Maximilian University (LMU) are also involved.
According to this, more than nine million people worldwide die prematurely every year from air contaminated with heavy metals such as lead or mercury.
"However, the causes of deaths from environmental pollution have changed," says Stephan Böse-O'Reilly, one of the researchers involved.
In a previous analysis, household air pollutants, water pollution and poor sanitation were drivers of deaths.
Now people are dying mostly because of pollutants entering the air from sources in industry, transport and agriculture, the leader said
of the Global Environmental Medicine and Climate Change working group at the LMU Klinikum.
Globally, every sixth death has such reasons.
According to Böse-O'Reilly, lead alone kills more people worldwide than malaria.
More than 90 percent of deaths are in low- and middle-income countries, according to the study published in the journal Lancet Planetary Health.
The situation in India is dramatic because many people live close together there.
The water pollution is high.
In addition, people often have to contend with bad air due to heavy traffic, while charcoal is sometimes used for cooking indoors.
In the European Union, pollution is a comparatively small problem, the situation has improved significantly, Böse-O'Reilly explained.
Air pollution in particular has improved as a result of regulatory measures, for example.
"That's why we have comparatively fewer deaths from environmental pollution, certainly not from mercury or lead - and if so, then from fine dust in the outside air."
However, Europe is also doing so well because industrial production has shifted to low- and middle-income countries.
"If you close an aluminum factory on the North Sea and reopen it in Asia, the associated exposure becomes a health problem for the population there, but we continue to use the products," the researcher explained.
According to Böse-O'Reilly, pollution is closely linked to climate change because air pollutant emissions are closely related to carbon dioxide emissions.
"If we were to improve the CO₂ situation, environmental pollution would automatically be reduced," he says.
joe/AFP