London, Europe Brief News – Pollution is still responsible for around 1 in every 6 deaths worldwide, scientists have found.
Around 9 million people a year are dying from worsening air pollution and toxic lead poisoning, according to scientists.
The staggering death count has continued since 2015, despite modest progress in some countries, a new study finds.
In fact, the data on global mortality and deterioration levels indicates a 7 per cent increase in these avoidable deaths from 2015 to 2019, driven by expanding industries, fossil fuels and urbanisation.
“We’re sitting in the stew pot and slowly burning,” said Richard Fuller, study co-author and head of the global nonprofit Pure Earth. But unlike climate change, malaria, or HIV, “we haven’t given [environmental pollution] much focus.”
An earlier version of the work published in 2017 also estimated the death toll from pollution at roughly 9 million per year — or about one of every six deaths worldwide — and the cost to the global economy at up to $4.6 trillion (€4.4 trillion) per year.
That puts pollution on par with smoking in terms of global deaths. COVID-19, by comparison, has killed about 6.7 million people globally since the pandemic began.
For their most recent study, published in the online journal Lancet Planetary Health, the authors analysed 2019 data from the Global Burden of Disease, an ongoing study by the University of Washington that assesses overall pollution exposure and calculates mortality risk.
The new analysis looks more specifically at the causes of pollution – separating traditional contaminants such as indoor smoke or sewage from more modern pollutants, like industrial air pollution and toxic chemicals.
