Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Air Pollution Caused 7 Million Deaths In 2012: WHO

The World Health Organization (WHO) reported that air pollution killed a total of 7 million people from all over the world in 2012. It says auto fumes and cooking fires also added up apart from vehicle smokes.

The report says one out of every eight people died due to pollution worldwide. Heart disease, stroke, pulmonary disease and lung cancer are said to be the biggest pollution related killers.

The WHO reported that developing nations in South Asia, South-East Asia and East Asia were the worst hit by air pollution causing a total of 3.3 million deaths due to indoor air pollution and 2.6 million due to outdoor pollution.

Indoor and outdoor pollution estimated a total of 5.9 million deaths together. Indoor pollution is mainly caused by cooking over wood and biomass stoves or coal and it resulted in 4.3 million deaths in the year.

The coal heating fires and diesel engines are the main cause of outdoor pollution and it accounted for 3.7 million deaths.

The WHO said that many people are exposed to both indoor and outdoor pollution and thus the exact number of deaths caused by either pollution cannot be calculated. So overall it results in an estimate of 7 million deaths.

Fire, being the main method used for cooking and heating in homes by people living in poor nations, estimates to 2.9 billion people worldwide and this turns homes into “combustion chambers”, said WHO.

On the other hand air pollution in industrialized countries of Europe contributed to 279,000 deaths.

No comments:

Post a Comment