New Delhi:
India saw more than 23.5 lakh premature deaths from all types of pollution — including 16.7 lakh fatalities caused by air pollution — in 2019, the highest among any country worldwide, according to a new study published in the journal The Lancet Planetary Health. .
Most of the deaths from air pollution — 9.8 lakh — in India were caused by PM2.5 pollution in the environment — tiny airborne pollution particles that are two and a half microns or less in width, the researchers said.
Another 6.1 lakh were due to household air pollution, they said.
Globally, pollution of any kind was responsible for nine million deaths in 2019 – equivalent to one in six deaths worldwide.
Air pollution – both household and ambient air – was responsible for the highest number of deaths with 6.67 million worldwide.
“The health impacts of pollution remain enormous, and low- and middle-income countries bear the brunt of this burden. Despite the enormous health, social and economic impacts, pollution prevention is largely overlooked in the international development agenda,” said lead author of the study. study. Richard Fuller, of Global Alliance on Health and Pollution, Geneva, Switzerland.
“Attention and funding have increased only minimally since 2015, despite well-documented increases in public concern about pollution and its health effects,” Fuller said in a statement.
In India, air pollution is most severe in the Indo-Gangetic Plain (northern India), where topography and meteorology concentrate pollution from energy, mobility, industry, agriculture and other activities, the researchers said.
According to the study, the burning of biomass in households was the leading cause of deaths from air pollution in India, followed by the burning of coal and the burning of crops.
Population-weighted average exposure to environmental air pollution peaked nationally in India at 95 milligrams per cubic meter (mg/m3) in 2014, fell to 82 mg/m3 in 2017, but has been slowly rising again recently, the researchers said.
“India has developed a range of tools to tackle air pollution, including a National Clean Air Programme, and launched an Air Quality Management Commission in the National Capital Region in 2019. State Pollution Control Boards have regulatory powers to impose and enforce emission standards. maintain on sources of pollution,” the study authors noted.
“However, India does not have a highly centralized administrative system to direct its air pollution control efforts and, as a result, improvements in overall air quality have been limited and uneven,” they said.
The report noted that India’s PM2.5 pollution remains well above the World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines of 10 micrograms per cubic meter in 93 percent of the country.
The WHO had recently tightened its air quality health guidelines and lowered the guideline value for PM2∙5 from 10 micrograms per cubic meter to 5 micrograms per cubic meter.
Deaths from traditional pollution (household air pollution from solid fuels and unsafe water, sanitation and hand washing) have fallen by more than 50 percent in India since 2000, the report said.
Excessive deaths from pollution have resulted in economic losses totaling $4-6 trillion in 2019 worldwide, which is 6.2 percent of global economic output, it said.
Economic losses from modern forms of pollution – particulate matter, air pollution, ozone pollution, exposure to lead, carcinogens at work, gases, vapors – have increased in India between 2000 and 2019 and now amount to about 1 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) ), it said.
The new report is an update from The Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health.
It states that while deaths from pollution sources associated with extreme poverty — such as indoor air pollution and water pollution — have declined, these declines are offset by an increase in deaths from industrial pollution, such as air pollution and chemical pollution.
“Pollution remains the single greatest existential threat to human and planet health, threatening the sustainability of modern societies,” said study co-author Professor Philip Landrigan, director of the Global Public Health Program and Global Pollution Observatory. at Boston College, USA.
“Preventing pollution can also slow climate change – providing a double benefit to the health of the planet – and our report calls for a massive, rapid transition from all fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy,” said Mr Landrigan.
The new report provides updated estimates for the health impacts of pollution based on the most recently available 2019 GBD data and methodological updates, as well as an assessment of trends since 2000.
The researchers said water pollution was responsible for 1.36 million premature deaths worldwide. Lead contributed to 900,000 premature deaths, followed by toxic occupational hazards with 870,000 deaths.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)