Air pollution kills over 2 million people every year in India, says study
PTC News Desk: Outdoor air pollution from all sources kills around 2.18 million people annually in India, second only to China, suggests a modelling study published in The BMJ.
According to the study, air pollution caused by the use of fossil fuels in industry, power generation, and transportation causes an additional 5.1 million deaths worldwide each year.
According to the researchers, this equates to 61% of an estimated 8.3 million deaths worldwide due to ambient (outdoor) air pollution from all sources in 2019, which could potentially be avoided by replacing fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy.
These new estimates of fossil fuel-related deaths are higher than most previously reported values, implying that phasing out fossil fuels may have a greater impact on attributable mortality than previously thought, according to the studies.
Researchers from Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry used a new model to estimate all-cause and cause-specific deaths caused by fossil fuel-related air pollution and to assess potential health benefits from policies that replace fossil fuels with clean, renewable energy sources.
The researchers assessed the number of deaths above that exceeded the expected number during a given time period using data from the Global Burden of Disease 2019 study, NASA satellite-based fine particulate matter and population data, and atmospheric chemistry, aerosol, and relative risk modelling for 2019, in four scenarios.
The first scenario assumes that all sources of emissions related to fossil fuels are phased out. The second and third scenarios assume that 25% and 50% of the exposure reductions towards the fossil phase-out are realised, respectively. The fourth scenario eliminates all anthropogenic (man-made) sources of air pollution, leaving only natural sources such as desert dust and wildfires.
Findings of the study:
In 2019, fine particles (PM2.5) and ozone (O3) in ambient air were responsible for 8.3 million deaths worldwide, with fossil fuels accounting for 61% (5.1 million).
According to the researchers, this equates to 82% of the maximum number of air pollution deaths that could be avoided by controlling all anthropogenic emissions.
The number of deaths attributable to all sources of ambient air pollution was highest in South and East Asia, particularly in China (2.44 million per year), followed by India (2.18 million per year).
- With inputs from agencies
