Slashdot Mirror
WHO: Air Pollution 'Killed 7 Million People' In 2012
dryriver sends word of new figures from the World Health Organization that estimate around 7 million people died in 2012 as a result of their exposure to air pollution. "In particular, the new data reveal a stronger link between both indoor and outdoor air pollution exposure and cardiovascular diseases, such as strokes and ischaemic heart disease, as well as between air pollution and cancer. This is in addition to air pollution’s role in the development of respiratory diseases, including acute respiratory infections and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases." The Organization says the bulk of the deaths occurred in South-East Asia and the Western Pacific Regions (PDF), with indoor air pollution causing more deaths than outdoor pollution in those areas, largely due to the use of coal, wood, and biomass stoves for cooking.
Lets ban nuclear power for this crime!
This right here is something that anyone who lives in a highly polluted urban area knows instinctively. You don't need studies and scientists to point out that pollution(air) is not healthy, and that exposure to it over time(years) is bad and probably contributes to Asthma and Emphysema(would appear obvious) and also things like Lung Cancer and Heart Disease... Common sense would dictate this observation.
This Common Sense observation, that air pollution is bad, is my main, MAIN point of animosity towards all the "there is no human caused global warming due to pollution or putting carbon into the atmosphere" douchebags.
Who gives a flying f*&k if the billions of tons of air pollution each year are causing climate change? Really! Why worry and argue about that when we know beyond any sort of Koch brothers funded propaganda that air pollution, the same air pollution putting billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, is also killing the oceans via acidification, browning the forest and(drum roll please...) killing humans.
We should be doing everything in our power to reduce the amount of air pollution we put into the air, if not for what it is doing to the climate, at least for what it is doing to our health.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
You could say that of any category of death.
Precisely, which is why medical researchers tend to speak of person-years. They also readily volunteer that people dying of cancer or heart attack at age 55 is a completely different thing than people dying of the same illnesses at age 90, since the latter would have died of something else not much later anyhow.
Like politics for example.
The statistic, as I pointed out, is meaningless and it is not used by medical researchers. Who is playing politics you say?