Tag Archives: world-health

Fossil fuels will be heavily represented at this year’s U.N. climate talks.

by TiffinyLudwig Posted on October 31, 2016

That’s according to a new report by UNICEF, which found that nearly one in seven children in the world live in areas where outdoor air pollution is at least six times higher than international guidelines set by the World Health Organization.

The report also found that air pollution — primarily caused by fossil fuel burning, vehicle emissions, waste incineration, and dust — contributes to the deaths of about 600,000 kids under the age of 5 each year. The statistics are most dire in South Asia, where an estimated 620 million children live with dirty air.

Air pollution is especially harmful to children as their lungs are still developing and their respiratory tracks are more permeable than adults’. But as UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake points out, “Pollutants don’t only harm children’s developing lungs, they can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and permanently damage their developing brains — and, thus, their futures.”

UNICEF is calling for countries to take several steps to minimize risk to kids, including reducing pollution, increasing access to health care, monitoring air pollution levels, and keeping polluting facilities away from schools and playgrounds.

“We protect our children when we protect the quality of our air,” Lake says. “Both are central to our future.”

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Fossil fuels will be heavily represented at this year’s U.N. climate talks.

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Air pollution kills 7 million people every year

by MagdalenaSIVG Posted on March 25, 2014

Air pollution kills 7 million people every year

By

Nina Hale

Cairo air pollution.

The World Health Organization’s latest advice could be reinterpreted as a cruel oxymoron: Stop breathing, or you’ll stop breathing. A tall order, but one in eight deaths in 2012 was caused by air pollution. And more likely than not, that one air-pollution-wrecked body lived its shortened life in a poor or developing country — probably in Asia.

WHO’s latest air-pollution-linked mortality estimates double previous annual figures, due largely to medical discoveries about pollution’s poisonous effects. Scientists have been discovering that a shockingly long list of afflictions can be exacerbated or triggered by air pollution — everything from heart attacks and lung cancer to diabetes and viral infections. The inhalation of tiny particles is now regarded as the world’s largest single environmental health risk — responsible for an estimated 7 million deaths in 2012.

According to the WHO, indoor air pollution killed 4.3 million people in 2012. It’s produced by stoves and heaters that are fueled with coal, wood, dung, and crop residue. Some 3 billion people rely on cooking and heating facilities like these. Women and young children were more heavily affected than men by indoor air pollution. Half of the kids who died in 2012 before reaching their 5th birthday were thought to have been killed by pneumonia linked to indoor air pollution.

The WHO also attributed 3.7 million premature deaths in 2012 to outdoor air pollution, which is largely caused by power plants, trucks, cars, and crop-burning — with 88 percent of those deaths in low- and middle-income countries, mostly in Asia.

“The risks from air pollution are now far greater than previously thought or understood, particularly for heart disease and strokes,” WHO official Maria Neira said. “Few risks have a greater impact on global health today than air pollution; the evidence signals the need for concerted action to clean up the air we all breathe.”

If there’s a silver lining to this cloud of soot, it’s that the world’s homicidal air pollution problem is starting to capture the global attention it deserves. Globetrotting journalists have been filing breathless dispatches about China’s famously soupy smog. This report is sure to raise the profile of the issue as well. Slowly, it seems, the message is getting through: The clean air we take for granted in much of the West would be a luxury for the world’s poor.


Source
7 million deaths annually linked to air pollution, WHO

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Air pollution kills 7 million people every year

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Pollution Killed 7 Million People Worldwide in 2012, Report Finds

by Myrna Posted on March 25, 2014

A World Health Organization report concluded that more than one-third of pollution deaths in 2012 occurred in fast-developing Asian nations. More: Pollution Killed 7 Million People Worldwide in 2012, Report Finds ; ;Related ArticlesNational Briefing | South: North Carolina: Lawyer Hired to Represent Agency in Spill Inquiry Once Worked for Duke EnergyObservatory: These Vultures Get First Dibs on the Good PartsAfter the Fact: Bird’s Extinction Is Tied to the Arrival of Humans ;

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Pollution Killed 7 Million People Worldwide in 2012, Report Finds

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