The Fight Against Air Pollution

You never see ‘air pollution’ written as the cause on death certificates,” an expert once told me. If it was, she suggested, the enormous toll toxic air takes on the health of billions of the world’s people would prompt a global emergency response.

But the winds of change are now blasting the air pollution crisis to greater prominence – driven by new data, revelations about the impact of poisonous air on virtually all aspects of health and, crucially, the increasing anger of affected people and communities.

There is no doubt that air pollution is a global crisis: it causes 6.5 million early deaths a year. That is double the number of people lost to HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and four times the number killed on the world’s roads. In Africa, air pollution kills three times more people than malnutrition.

Half the early deaths result from indoor cooking with smoky fuels, a problem linked closely to poverty and readily solved, if the will and means exist. But the other half results from outdoor air pollution – caused by traffic, power stations, factories, construction, heating and more – and is far more dispersed and harder to tackle.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/feb/13/war-air-pollution-fought-cities

Isengardt

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