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

[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 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:Global warming

[hcs_$reboot]

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

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.

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.

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.