The global toll of early deaths attributed to fossil fuel air pollution caused by the burning of coal, diesel and gasoline is worryingly high, with a study doubling past estimates stating that one in every five people die globally because of this.
According to an NRDC report, the results of burning fuels such as "melting glaciers, rising seas and increasing global temperature averages," feel quite widespread, and one should consider the "act of taking a breath of air."
For several years now, researchers have known about the fatal effects of fossil fuel combustion. However, a peer-reviewed study which Environmental Research published, as mentioned, has put the worldwide death toll at more than double compared what was previously estimated.
Millions of Deaths Worldwide
Based on this study, exposure to fine particulate matter or PM 2.5 resulting from burning fossil fuels was the reason for the roughly 8.7 million deaths all over the world in 2018.
That's equivalent to about the same number of people residing in New York City or London. To put this global health crisis into further viewpoint, fossil fuel pollution does not just fuel the climate crisis. It kills more people year after year, too, compared to malaria, HIV and tuberculosis combined.
According to ear, nose and throat physician, Neelu Tammala, from the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences, "We don't appreciate that air pollution is an invisible killer."
The physician added, the air humans breathe affects the health of everyone but children, older individuals, and people on low incomes and those of color, in particular. Typically, people who live in urban areas experience the worse effects.
PM 2.5
PM 2.5 is any airborne particle with a diameter of up to a maximum of 2.5 microns or roughly one-thirtieth a single human hair's width.
Particles this small are problematic since they remain in the air, are readily exhaled, and can enter deep into the lungs, where they can penetrate the bloodstream and cause damage to several organs.
Links between this pollution type and a great range of severe health problems like cardiovascular disease, cancer, tissue impairment and asthma, as well as other respiratory illnesses are well documented
Inhaling high PM 2.5 levels is particularly hazardous for young children, whose organs and immune reactions are still developing. They are the ones too, who breathe in more air. Therefore, more pollution, related to their body weight compared to adults.
Furthermore, exposure to air pollution has been contributing too, to the disproportionate infection of COVID-19, as well as its death rates among people of color in the United States.
Alarming Study
This Environmental Research study, which the team of researchers from Harvard University, University of Birmingham, and University of Leicester authored, is said to be alarming for various reasons.
The approximated early deaths every year, for example, do not include those resulted that result from long-term "exposure to ozone air pollution, or smog" which is also a result of fossil fuel combustion.
Its computations for deadly lower-respiratory infection in young children aged below five years old are also limited to higher-wage nations in Europe, as well as in North and South America, where such cases are inclined to be much less typical.
In general, this pollution type took the highest toll on people in countries like India and China, totaling almost five million premature deaths in the said two countries alone.
Other hard-hit locations included western Europe, Southern Asia and other areas of the US Northeast and Midwest.
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