In 2015, 1 in 6 deaths globally was due to poor air quality, unsafe water and toxic chemical pollution.
On Tuesday, a new study was published by the Lancet Planetary Health journal, that portrayed pollution to be the world’s largest environmental health threat in disease and premature deaths, with more the 90% of the deaths taking place in poor and underdeveloped countries.
The report’s lead author Richard Fuller said in an interview that the lack of priority and knowledge accounts for the grim tally of 9 million deaths per year to continue unabated.
He also said that despite 9 million people dying every year globally, nations across the world remain oblivious to the growing danger of pollution.
To understand the extent of the damage.
The study used 2019 data from Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries and Risk Factors, found that air pollution accounted for the substantial majority of premature deaths, at 6.7 million.
Water pollution resulted for 1.4 million deaths world wide, while lead poisoning took close to a million lives.
A fisherman in Colorado, US shows the effects of releasing untreated waste water from industrial and energy plants on local marine wildlife. Photo Source : Reuters
The report brings upto date a similar analysis held by Fuller and his colleagues in 2015, which also found air and water pollution as the most likely culprits.
Although the total number of pollution-related deaths has not changed in the past five years, their sources have shifted and spawned in various surrounding regions.
In the past, most pollution deaths globally occurred from indoor and household air pollution, caused by release of soot particles from indoor stoves burning wood or dung as fuel.
Unclean water and untreated sewage were also responsible for loss of more than a million lives.
The solution is not an easy one.
Fuller reported that the source of pollution in recent years has decreased substantially, as more and more families in China and India have switched to gas for cooking.
But concerns of increased pollution rates is at hand already. Now instead of the traditional pollutants, automobile combustion, fossil fuel burning’s, and toxic chemical pollution’s have come up as the greater health risk’s in todays world and society.
Fossil fuel burning’s and emissions from industrial plants are responsible for the majority of air pollution in cities. Photo Source : Reuters.
Nearly 2 million people have died from industrial and chemical pollution in China, as compared to 367,000 from traditional pollutant sources previously.
Third world countries – Highest in ranking.
In Africa, traditional pollutants still rank as the main cause of pollution-related disease and death, although industrial pollution is on the rise.
Illegal gold mining operations in south Africa leave behind acid pools that essentially destroy the local biodiversity and well as soil fertility. Photo Source : The Guardian.
Neelu Tummala, a physician and co-director of the Climate Health Institute at George Washington University said upon gazing on the significant increase in industrialization, an increased trend of urbanization and the rise of an aging population, more vulnerable to the health impacts of air pollution than previously is noted globally.
Fuller and his colleagues noticed that deaths from “modern” pollution sources increased by 7% from 2015 to 2019. Since 2000, receiving a astonishing boom by nearly 66%. Something previously unprecedented by scientists.
The deaths From pollution also take an economic toll on a nation’s gross domestic produce (GDP).
In South Asia, for instance, deaths caused by air pollution alone caused a 10.3% GDP loss in 2019. Air pollution-related deaths globally reduced worlds economic output by 6.1%.
Efforts to curb pollution underway worldwide.
In the meantime , US and some European countries have reduced their economic losses tied to pollution-related deaths by installing pollution controls and shifting some of their industrial production to poorer countries.
A study held in November showed the world’s 20 largest economies responsibilities for two million air pollution-related deaths due to outsourcing the production of goods to developing nations.
Children in developing countries like Indonesia are more susceptible to the negative impacts of Pollution, the fault within the system claims millions of lives each year. Photo Source: Reuters
Keisuke Nansai a researcher at the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan and not involved in the Lancet analysis, reported in an email that the number of deaths in low-income countries will continue to increase without intervention.
Nansai added things will not change until high-income countries with the technology and financial resources to understand the involvement of low-income countries in premature deaths, create an international mechanism to jointly solve the problems.
Conclusion
Fuller and his colleagues included several recommendations in the report for procedures addressing pollution issues, and also called for an international movement to establish the importance of pollution monitoring systems and funding for pollution control projects globally.
Fuller and his co-author Rachael Kupka are slowly trying to fix that through the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution network.
Kupka’s group conduct workshops in various nations and help several departments like Health and Media to help understand the correlation between pollution and the lives it claims if ignored.
Third world countrie’s like India have very minor restrictions to discourage water pollution, as evident by the state of the Ganges river, once deemed one of the holiest river in the world. Photo Source : Reuters.
Fuller also said that many of the major causes of pollution deaths will decrease automatically if countries follow through on plans to address climate change, like using renewable energy and decreasing the burning’s and combustion of fossil fuels which will improve air quality index globally.
