Study: Air pollution deaths to double in our lifetime

Monday, September 21, 2015, 1:52 PM - Air pollution kills more than three million people annually -- and a new study says that number is set to double by 2050 if Earth's emissions aren't curbed.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany found that death by air pollution exposure was especially common in Asia. It claims 1.4 million people in China and 650,000 people in India annually. 

Other global hotspots include Nigeria, which has the highest population of any country in Africa, the Indonesia island of Java, and parts of the Middle East along the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates rivers. 

In the European Union, with a population of around half a billion people, air pollution is responsible for 180,000 deaths annually, highest in Germany at 35,000. 

Pollution studies with a dire message about Asian cities aren't uncommon. A recent study put the daily death rate from air pollution related causes at 4,000 per day in China, or almost 1 in 5 of all deaths.

The Max Planck study, however, claims to be a first, in that scientists from Germany, the United States, Cyprus and Saudi Arabia took a look at mortality rates from various emission sources, from industry and agriculture down to transportation and home heating, and came up with the data represented in the map below.

In much of Eurasia, including parts of northern China and Japan, air pollution from agricultural activity is the leading cause of premature deaths. For most of southern China and much of India, however, the leading cause is smog from what researchers call small domestic fires, likely for cooking or heating. They make up a third of all domestic premature deaths from air pollution, and the researchers call them the worst air polluters.

"Although these are low-key activities, they add up, particularly if the majority of the population uses them," Johannes Lelieveld, the Max Planck Institute's director, says. 

Looking at Canada, deaths from agricultural air pollution are most common along the Windsor-Quebec City corridor, while on the southern Prairies and British Columbia, industrial pollution seems to be the most harmful, while in the Rockies, pollution from transportation-related activities seems the most common.

As for the kind of deaths caused by air pollution, the study found strokes and heart attacks accounted for almost three quarters, with lung cancer and respiratory diseases making up 27 per cent.

SOURCES: Max Planck Institute | Nature