New Study Finds That Pollution Kills 9 Million People A Year: Know Who's At Most Risk

An estimated 9 million people die from pollution of all types each year, according to a study of global mortality and pollution levels published in The Lancet Planetary Health journal.

Causes & impact

The death toll is attributed to dirty air from cars, trucks and industry rising 55% since 2000. That increase is offset by fewer pollution deaths from primitive indoor stoves and water contaminated with human and animal waste, so overall pollution deaths in 2019 are about the same as 2015.

Pollution is an "existential threat to human health and planetary health, and jeopardizes the sustainability of modern societies," the study found, adding that its impact on global health remains "much greater than that of war, terrorism, malaria, HIV, tuberculosis, drugs and alcohol".

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"We're sitting in the stew pot and slowly burning," said Richard Fuller, a study co-author and head of Pure Earth, a global nonprofit. But unlike climate change, malaria, or HIV, "we haven't given (environmental pollution) much focus."

The latest figures put pollution on par with smoking in terms of global deaths, and kills about the same number of people a year around the world as cigarette smoking and second-hand smoke combined, the study said. In comparison, COVID-19 killed over 6 million people globally since the pandemic began.

Top 10 nations for total pollution deaths

The United States is the only fully industrialized country in the top 10 nations for total pollution deaths, ranking 7th with 142,883 deaths blamed on pollution in 2019, sandwiched between Bangladesh and Ethiopia, according to the new study in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health.

India and China lead the world in pollution deaths with nearly 2.4 million and almost 2.2 million deaths a year, but the two nations also have the world¡¯s largest populations.

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What experts say

"Nine million deaths is a lot of deaths," said Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Public Health Program and Global Pollution Observatory at Boston College. "The bad news is that it's not decreasing," Landrigan said.

"We're making gains in the easy stuff and we're seeing the more difficult stuff, which is the ambient (outdoor industrial) air pollution and the chemical pollution, still going up." It doesn't have to be this way, researchers said.

"They are preventable deaths. Each and every one of them is a death that is unnecessary," said Dr. Lynn Goldman, dean of the George Washington University School of Public Health, who wasn't part of the study. She said the calculations made sense and, if anything, the study was conservative about what it attributed to pollution ¡ª the real death toll is likely higher.

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Why it's alarming

The certificates for these deaths don't say pollution. They list heart disease, stroke, lung cancer, other lung issues and diabetes that are "tightly correlated" with pollution by numerous epidemiological studies, Landrigan said.

To then put these together with actual deaths, researchers look at the number of deaths by cause, exposure to pollution weighted for various factors, and then complicated exposure response calculations derived by large epidemiological studies based on thousands of people over decades of study, he said.

It's the same way scientists can say cigarettes cause cancer and heart disease deaths.

Areas that are the worst to live

Pollution deaths are soaring in the poorest areas, experts said.

"This problem is worst in areas of the world where population is most dense (e.g. Asia) and where financial and government resources to address the pollution problem are limited and stretched thin to address a host of challenges including health care availability and diet as well as pollution," said Dan Greenbaum, president of the Health Effects Institute, who wasn't part of the study.

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How Delhi fares

In New Delhi, India, air pollution peaks in the winter months and last year the city saw just two days when the air wasn't considered polluted. It was the first time in four years that the city experienced a clean air day during the winter months.

That air pollution remains the leading cause of death in South Asia reaffirms what is already known, but the increase in these deaths means that toxic emissions from vehicles and energy generation is increasing, said Anumita Roychowdhury, a director at the advocacy group Centre for Science and Environment in New Delhi.

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The solutions

The study authors came up with eight recommendations to reduce pollution deaths, highlighting the need for better monitoring, better reporting and stronger government systems regulating industry and cars. "We absolutely know how to solve each one of those problems," Fuller said. "What's missing is political will."

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