Article source : Treehugger by Derek Markham
Image : CC BY 2.0 Joey Sow

Spoiler: Deadly air pollution is deadly

If there's one indisputable negative effect on the planet of our massive fossil fuel energy appetite over the last century, and one that has an immediate and ongoing impact on us, it's air pollution.

The other major negative effect of our combustion-happy civilization, climate change, has a vocal minority opposition camp (who I guess we're now calling “climate change doubters”), but when I did a quick search for air pollution skeptics and air pollution deniers, I came up with only a small handful of links to actual "air pollution doubters" (my words), most of which centered around the argument of whether or not excess CO2 should be considered a pollutant (ya know, 'cause it makes plants grow and all that). So I guess you could say climate change is disputed, even if it's only by a few.

But air pollution is directly linked to shorter life spans and premature deaths, among a host of other health impacts, right now, not in the future as the dangers of climate change threaten to bring us, and is considered to be "the greatest environmental disaster in the world today."

We've been covering air pollution stories for years here on TreeHugger, so it should be no surprise that yet another study has confirmed that air pollution remains a deadly and reliable killer which could get twice as deadly if we don't curb our "business-as-usual" emissions levels. The new research, just published in the journal Nature, concluded that some 3.3 million people per year die prematurely from outdoor air pollution, predominantly through exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5, with a diameter smaller than 2.5 micrometers), with the majority located in Asia.

"We find that emissions from residential energy use such as heating and cooking, prevalent in India and China, have the largest impact on premature mortality globally, being even more dominant if carbonaceous particles are assumed to be most toxic."

"The ammonia reacts with fumes from traffic and industry to produce tiny particles and is the largest cause of air pollution deaths in the eastern US, Japan and in Europe. “For London, agriculture is the main source,” said Lelieveld. Across the UK, 48% of the premature deaths were ultimately the result of agricultural pollution."