AIR POLLUTION — KILLS 10 MILLION A YEAR, WRECKS THE PLANET
That’s 30,000 dead every day — much more than killed by the flu, Covid or AIDS. But, wait, it gets worse: more than 90 percent of the world's population is breathing dangerously polluted air,” writes David Wallace-Wells in a must-read London Review of Books essay. And then there’s the fact that living with a high level of air pollution is a Covid risk factor.
Warning: The stream of terrible statistics in Wallace-Wells essay can be overwhelming, it may even “strain credulity” since “none of us can picture someone dying in the street from air pollution,” Wallace-Wells admits. So try this on for size: Environmental historian Stephen Pyne calls our era the ‘pyrocene.’ It’s not one thing that’s the problem (say, cars) but a global mania for burning things: fossil fuels, forests, farmland and more — “most of it planned” — that, in effect, means we’re all pyromaniacs now.
Local benefits, global change: The benefits of cutting air pollution are local, as well as a global contribution against climate change, and that may make fighting air pollution a bridge to broad-based climate action mandates. “Everything we burn, we breathe,” writes Wallace-Wells.
India is the world’s capital of air pollution : India is home to 13 of the 14 cities with the worst air in the world. In Delhi the air is often so thick with particles that train drivers cannot see the tracks. The majority of those diagnosed with COPD — chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — don’t even smoke cigarettes, and on average the pollution shortens lives by about 10 years.
It’s a Yes-Brainer: In Los Angeles, after air purifiers were installed in schools ($700 to $1000 each), student performance improved almost as much as it would if class sizes were reduced by a third. Other demonstrated brain-related problems due to air pollution begin in the womb, and range from higher rates of birth defects to higher rates of depression, suicide, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.
No escaping it, unless you reduce or eliminate it : In 2019, a comprehensive global review by the Forum of International Respiratory Societies found that air pollution damages every organ, indeed virtually every cell, in the body. The WHO now advises that 99 percent of people are exposed to too much air pollution.
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