More Than 95% of World's Population Breathing Unhealthy Air, Says New Report (cnn.com)

More than 95% of the world's population is breathing unhealthy air and the poorest nations are the hardest hit, a new report has found. From the report: According to the annual State of Global Air Report, published Tuesday by the Health Effects Institute (HEI), long-term exposure to air pollution contributed to an estimated 6.1 million deaths across the globe in 2016. The report says exposure to air pollution led to strokes, heart attacks, lung cancer and chronic lung disease, causing many of those premature deaths. It also says that air pollution is the fourth-highest cause of death among all health risks globally, coming in below high blood pressure, diet and smoking.

Comments

Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy air?

[bogaboga]

I am just wondering where to find those 5%. Any one with a clue?

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[Tablizer]

Southern Australians?

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[muphin]

i dont think theres 365 million people in Australia :p

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[Bradac_55]

And yet the USA has currently the cleanest air since the industrial revolution.

The most common pollution

[cirby]

Aside from living in China (which is a nasty business by itself), a whole lot of folks get their "air pollution" by cooking over smoky wood fires in their houses, huts, or shacks.

As mentioned above, the US is currently pretty darned clean, air-wise. I remember watching the smog roll over the hills from L.A. to the High Desert in the early 1980s. It looked like an overdone special effect.

Re:The most common pollution

[110010001000]

The air may LOOK clean, but that doesn't mean it is. Just because you don't see smoke coming out of a tailpipe doesn't mean that there is no pollution.

Re:The most common pollution

[hey!]

The dramatic reduction in visble smog levels since the 1970s is mostly due to the elimination of pollutants that are invisible at the tailpipe. Stuff like NOx and sulfur oxides react with volatile organic compounds to produce the familiar brownish haze. Aerosolized particulates also aren't necessarily visible at the tailpipe but collected in the atmosphere they produce visible effects over long distances.

So while it's true that you can't see most of the bad stuff coming out of your tailpipe, you can certainly see the effect of everyone dumping those bad things into the air. The elimination of routine smog events in most of the country is a real regulatory achievement, but over half of Americans are not old enough to remember the status quo ante. It was, by modern standards, pretty awful.

Re:The most common pollution

[StikyPad]

The US *is* doing well, recent efforts to the contrary notwithstanding. Yet without also convincing the rest of the world to put pollution controls in place, we're still being affected. Air pollution doesn't just stop at border crossings. At current levels, this stuff is circulating the globe in harmful quantities.. There's virtually nowhere in the Continental US with an AQI below 20 most times of the year.

I am currently living in a country that is *not* doing well, where AQI reaches over 400 on a weekly basis, and rarely drops below 100, and it's discouraging to see a government so callous about the effects on its own people. The government would argue a) air pollution doesn't exist, but if it did, that it's people are too poor to impose regulations on them. This is complete nonsense, of course, and hospitals are full of people suffering from cardiopulmonary problems which, to me, says they cannot afford The absence of regulation.

We, globally, need to do a better job of creating a framework of incentives and penalties, because voluntary compliance is not a viable way forward. China *may* have turned a corner, but they're far from alone, and many Asian and African countries are only getting worse.

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[orion205]

I am just wondering where to find those 5%. Any one with a clue?

Just look at the map on page 3 of the report.

It shows most of Africa, the Middle East, and southern Asia with the worst pollution. Countries at higher latitudes have much cleaner air. Canada, the United States (apart from the San Joaquin Valley and areas of the midwest), and large areas of Russia, Northern Europe, and Australia have pollution below the WHO guideline. Western Europe is pretty good, but Germany and northern France have particulate pollution higher than the guideline.

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[lazlo]

Maybe 5% of the world's population is just holding their breath?

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet the USA has currently the cleanest air since the industrial revolution.

That's a pretty low bar. It'll be wonderful if we could stop burning shit and emitting shit.

Peoples' health is suffering because business is basically transferring their costs onto the people. Why clean up their emissions when they can just spew it into the air and when regulation is mentioned just scream, "The costs to us! And jobs will be lost!"

And in the meantime, the people are burden with the poor health and in the US the outrageous medical bills.

Privatize the profits; socialize the costs.

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[CrimsonAvenger]

Well, since TFA says 95% of them are in poor countries, that suggests the 5% are in places like the USA and EU mostly.

Of course, TFA also says there were ~54 million deaths of all causes worldwide in 2015. Which is consistent with an average life expectancy of 140-odd....

Re:Australian desert

[viperidaenz]

The maps are just estimates, coloured for effect, not accuracy.

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[tomhath]

Peoples' health is suffering because business is basically transferring their costs onto the people...he people are burden with the poor health and in the US the outrageous medical bills.

Almost all of the US has clean air, except for the biggest cities. And the pollution there is primarily car exhaust, not businesses.

The biggest things people can do to reduce the cost of healthcare is to quit smoking, lose weight, and exercise.

Just because things used to be worse

[rsilvergun]

doesn't mean they are better now. I wish I could get more people to understand this.

Re:Just because things used to be worse

[Anonymous Coward]

No there is a definate limit to how good things can be. People have a need to struggle. If they are put in a world that is for all intents and purpose an Eden. They will inevitably start fighting with their fellow humans. They will start wars for perceived minor injustices perpetrated on their ancestors by another tribe due to a lack of complete equality. They will break into camps called democrats and republicans and spend all say on the internet complaining about how the world couild be more perfect if only the other guys were all dead.

Now on the other hand if the world were full of toxic gasses, and people were being killed regularly by tigers roaming the city, and a meteor stuck and wiped out a couple billion people, inevitably people would become brothers and join forces to fight the toxic smog, saber tooth tigers and meteors that were killing them.

So yes if you want to have people stop fighting each other you need to make to world less perfect. That is why I support global warming and think we should burn old tires to light the streets.

Re:Just because things used to be worse

[thinkwaitfast]

Actually that's exact what that means. Maybe you'd like to reword that to be correct or make some point.

In a rural setting yes

[rsilvergun]

but not in the cities. There it's smog, largely from cars stuck in traffic and (almost hilariously) idling in fast food drive thrus. You don't even have to question this. Apart from well publicized 'smog days' you can just drive outside any city and look at the smog cloud.

Re:In a rural setting yes

[Quirkz]

Wouldn't the cars that are actually driving be putting out more of the pollutants than the idling ones? Idling is a relatively low-consumption state.

Re: Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy a

[BeaverCleaver]

"Life expectancy at birth." After the industrial revolution we got a lot better at treating illnesses that used to kill very young children, e.g. measles, polio, whooping cough. This skewed the statistic way up. Much more than people dying at 70 instead of 75 due to air pollution.

Where's the warning?

[liquid_schwartz]

I sure hope the California air has the mandatory cancer label. The nerve of that air not being labeled. We can tolerate any number of illegals but on serious issues like Prop 65 we stand firm.

Re:Where's the warning?

[Gavagai80]

There are legions of skywriters paid to continually re-draw the prop 65 warning in the air.

Re:Where's the warning?

[JudgeFurious]

Will the illegals be able to read the air labels if they're not in both English and Spanish? Will they be allowed to bring their own illegal Spanish-speaking air with them from across the border? I'm bringing these questions up at the next San Francisco City Council meeting! Surely they can pass an ordinance that will be binding for all 50 states.

Re: Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy a

[Reverend Green]

Actually no.

Urban life expectancy declined precipitously during the industrial revolution. It turns out that horrible pollution, long hours in an unsafe factory environment, and grinding poverty are pretty bad for human health. Who knew?!

We owe our current (declining, if you're an American) life expectancy to two advances occurring well after the industrial revolution proper: urban sanitation (water & sewer) systems, and antibiotics.

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[war4peace]

Most rural areas, except where heavy industries reside; northern populations (Lapland, Iceland, parts of Siberia), lots of insular countries, etc.
Numbers add up.

Re:Global warming

[hcs_$reboot]

OTOH fixing global warming should have a positive impact on the air we breathe.

Which is so odd

[Gumpu]

cause it is so easy to breath in a healthy way; you breath in, then out, and repeat the process....

I apologize already

[Memnos]

All RIGHT.

So I farted.

Sorry! (Geez..)

More than 95% of World's Population Breathing

[Anonymous Coward]

Coincidentally, this was the subject of a very worthwhile podcast from the BBC: "More or Less". As with all statistics, one has to understand what lies behind - how did "they" reach these numbers, what do they mean by unhealthy and who are "they" anyway? It turns out that "they" are WHO or some other reasonably reliable source; the numbers as such are sound as well, and what they are about is one pollutant: particulates, and the criterion for whether the air is healthy is an official guideline number: 10 (what? for the sake of the argument, let's 'particles per m^3', but it isn't essential for the discussion here). So unhealthy air would be an average of >10 units - if it is 12, as in some cities, it is counted as unhealthy, and if it is 150, it's the same, in this particular statistic, although I suspect we can all agree that 150 is a good worse than 12.

So, there is nothing wrong with the number, but one has to understand what it actually says; and unfortunately most news media have not bothered, but instead go on to explain how it shortens lifespans and make it hard to breathe - which is certainly true, as far as it goes. However, the effect is going to depend on exactly how bad the numbers are, and we also have to remember that what produces the pollution also in some cases contribute positively in other ways to people's health and quality of life: as an example, if London were to get rid of all motorised transport, it might add 30 days to people's life expectancy; on the other hand, that life expectancy now stands at somewhere in the 90es for millenials, mostly due to the technologies that pollute; how much would life expectancy go down, were we to abandon significant parts of technology? It is not a simple and straightforward decision to make.

That's me

[Chrisq]

That's me ... especially after I've had a beer and chile beans!

Re:Global warming

[drinkypoo]

OTOH fixing global warming should have a positive impact on the air we breathe.

Both problems have the same fix, more trees. They both sequester carbon and filter air.

Re:Unhealthy or unhealthful?

[Dantoo]

Make a car journey of at least 10 hours with 2 vegetarians, in winter, with the windows up. All will be revealed. No exam needed.

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[Subm]

We exported many of our polluting industries to places that, lo and behold, now have poor air quality.

Try to get rich people to pollute less

[Subm]

Now try getting an American or rich person to fly less, turn down the heating in the winter or cooling in the summer, or buy less manufactured useless stuff.

Trivial changes that could reduce our pollution 90% without lowering anyone's quality of life are looked at as, "What do you want us to return to the stone age and live in caves?" as if riding a bike to work or wearing a sweater indoors in the winter undid all of human civilization.

Everyone reading these words, including you, can do things today, here, now to pollute less.

Re:Try to get rich people to pollute less

[Attila Dimedici]

Ummm, no the rich cannot make "trivial changes" to their lifestyle, or ANY changes to their lifestyle, which would reduce the pollution being talked about in this study by 90%. The overwhelming majority of particulate pollution is emitted by actions of the VERY poor (I am not blaming them for it, just stating a fact). The way to reduce particulate pollution, which is what this article is talking about, by a large amount is to improve the life of the poor so that they are not cooking their food and heating their homes with solid fuel (coal, wood, etc).

There are things done by the wealthy that could, and perhaps should, be eliminated which would reduce particulate pollution, but, on the world scale, only by a small amount.

Re:Try to get rich people to pollute less

[kackle]

"Rich people"? Please. How many people replace their functional cell phone every few years? How many people revamp rooms in their homes just because they no longer like the style? 'Tube TVs - that's not hip; throw them all out and buy a smart one (which will only last half as long)!' 'Alexa is sooooo helpful; gotta have one of those! Hell, one for each room!' 'My commute is monstrously long; but what can I do about it?' 'And I sit in stop-and-go traffic, which I can avoid by going in early and doing something (personally) productive, but I don't want to shift my sleeping pattern by an hour.' 'I could buy this in town on the way home from work, but Amazon Amazon Amazon!' 'I'll replace my working appliance/HVAC because I assume the new ones are soooo much more energy efficient - the guy selling it to me said so!'

I could go on and on, but now I'm just wasting energy.

And no, recycling is still wasteful, just not as much as the landfill.

Re:Try to get rich people to pollute less

[PPH]

If you look at the map in TFA, the worst air isn't in rich people's countries. It coincides with parts of the world where burning down forests, coal generated power, indoor cooking over open fires and huge cites full of 2-cycle scooters are the norm. And smoking. So it's a third world problem that the third world has to step up and solve.

Burt

[sycodon]

If Burt is in the elevator in the morning for the trip up, we are definitely breathing dirty air.

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[cashman73]

So, instead of building a wall, shouldn't we be constructing a giant spaceship transfer that turns into Mega-Maid with a vacuum cleaner? I hear the combination for Planet Druidia is 12345. Oddly enough, that's the same combination on President Trump's luggage.

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[slash.jit]

International Space Station

Re:Global warming

[thegarbz]

Yet people are worried about Global Warming, while they choke on the air they breathe daily. Humans.

It'll blow your mind to know that something can cause two problems at once.

Re:Rich people's estates

[wyHunter]

An awful lot of them live in NYC, not the best place for air.

Cancer

[Rick Schumann]

https://www.goodreads.com/quot...

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[thinkwaitfast]

In a world of personal beliefs, you don't have to think. Keep it up.

Re: Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy a

[elgatozorbas]

We owe our current (declining, if you're an American) life expectancy to two advances occurring well after the industrial revolution proper: urban sanitation (water & sewer) systems, and antibiotics.

... and antiseptics.

It is a common misunderstanding that a life expectancy of e.g. 35 years implies that most people die around that age, and e.g. sexagenarians are extremely rare. In reality, people in e.g. the Middle Ages regularly reached "old age" as well. That is: if they survived birth and infancy. Child mortality and childbed fever (killing the mother) used to be very high until Ignace Semmelweiss introduced hand disinfection before assisting in childbirth. At that time, it was not uncommon for doctors to perform autopsies and then go on to deliver babies without so much as washing their hands. Even though he saved thousands of lives, Semmelweiss did not fare well and ended up in the loony bin

Something similar happened in the world of surgery. Nineteenth century surgeons were unaware of microbes and did not work under sterile conditions. Here it was Joseph Lister who realised the importance of antiseptics and eventually changed medical practices.

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[DickBreath]

This is a HUGE opportunity to sell clean air to the 95%.

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[Ichijo]

Almost all of the US has clean air, except for the biggest cities. And the pollution there is primarily car exhaust, not businesses.

[Citation Needed] that shows that car exhaust is the main source of air pollution in cities and not truck exhaust, ship/train exhaust, power plants, or agricultural emissions.

Re:Very Interesting

[RockDoctor]

Well, if you;d ever read "Origin" (which you clearly haven't) you'd know that large chunks of it's "one long argument" is based around the effectiveness of artificial selection in animal husbandry. Darwin himself was a "fancy" pigeon breeder.

I can't think off-hand of any chemicals used in Victorian Britain (and before) which produced the sort of heritable genetic changes you're looking for. People had certainly noticed that some diseases "run in families", but examples that lead to the association of certain chemicals with such heritable effects - I can't think of any before the early 20th century. Which was when environmental safety and product safety regulations started to bite. People were starting to see environmental toxic effects (e.g. testicular cancer in chimney sweeps ; mercury in Alice's "Mad Hatter" ; volatile arsenic compounds from bright green arseneous wallpaper dyes), but proving the connection to particular products was in it's infancy.

You seem a bit hazy on the structure of the theory. Evolution is the product of heritable within-species variation which is then selected to give differential breeding rates. Variation can be heritable or non-heritable, and only the heritable variations can be part of evolution. Selection can be artificial (by a human being - eg wanting a hairless breed of cat) or natural (by non-artificial forces - eg Siberian tigers having thicker coats than Indian tigers, because they spend more time in snow).

Re:Where does one find the 5% breathing healthy ai

[RockDoctor]

We exported many of our polluting industries

... Don't worry - The ORANGEutan-in-chief is forcing some American countries to come back to doing this in America.

to places that, lo and behold, now have poor air quality.

But that#s not a concern - only poor voters are likely to die in any significant numbers.

Re:Unhealthy or unhealthful?

[RockDoctor]

You know that oxygen is essential to human life? No oxygen, blue lips, dead meat ... all that jazz. Did you know that oxygen is also a toxin with a pretty steep dose-lethality curve? Almost everyone is OK with 1.3 atmospheres of total oxygen pressure ; almost everyone dies at 1.8 atmospheres. Oxygen is a significant risk factor in a lot of cancers, by causing oxidative damage to DNA. It's both things at the same time.