Air pollution kills 7 million people a year

This 2017 video says about itself:

What is air pollution? Learn how greenhouse gasses, smog, and toxic pollutants effect climate change, and human health.

Nine out of ten people worldwide have to breath polluted air. That is what the World Health Organisation reports on the basis of new figures. It is estimated that it kills seven million people every year.

New research suggests that long-term exposure to traffic-related pollution significantly increases the risk of pediatric asthma, especially in early childhood. Children living within a football field’s length of major roadways had nearly three times the odds of pediatric asthma compared to children who lived four times farther away: here.

Children who were exposed to higher levels air pollution while in the womb had a higher risk of elevated blood pressure in childhood. This is one of the first studies to show that air pollution may have negative health effects on offspring exposed during pregnancy: here.

People continuously exposed to air pollution are at increased risk of dementia, especially if they also suffer from cardiovascular diseases, according to a study at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the journal JAMA Neurology. Therefore, patients with cardiovascular diseases who live in polluted environments may require additional support from care providers to prevent dementia, according to the researchers: here.

Air pollution’s a threat to humanity’s wellbeing: here.

According to a 2015 report by UNICEF, 500,000 children across sub-Saharan Africa died from pneumonia, and researchers found that air pollution was a leading contributor to pneumonia’s prevalence. An overwhelming majority of the deaths included children under the age of five: here.

Counties with higher levels of fine particulate (PM2.5) air pollution have more stroke deaths and shorter life expectancies among their citizenry. About half of US counties have annual air pollution levels that exceed guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency: here.

Exposure to air pollution, particularly at school, could be associated with a higher risk of overweight and obesity during childhood. This is the conclusion of a study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), an institution supported by “la Caixa,” performed with 2,660 children between 7 and 10 years of age from 39 schools in Barcelona: here.

Air pollution could be causing double the number of excess deaths a year in Europe than has been estimated previously, according to a study published in the European Heart Journal today (Tuesday). Using a new method of modelling the effects of various sources of outdoor air pollution on death rates, the researchers found that it caused an estimated 790,000 extra deaths in the whole of Europe in 2015 and 659,000 deaths in the 28 Member States of the European Union (EU-28). Of these deaths, between 40-80% were due to cardiovascular diseases (CVD), such as heart attacks and stroke. Air pollution caused twice as many deaths from CVD as from respiratory diseases: here.

UNHEALTHY AIR DAYS IN U.S. CITIES RISE The number of unhealthy air days in major cities across the United States has risen sharply over the last two years, even as emissions of key pollutants continue to slip, according to data released by the Environmental Protection Agency. [Reuters]

If China takes strong measures to reduce its ozone pollution now, it could save hundreds of thousands of lives in the long run, according to a new study led by researchers at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory: here.

For decades pollution in China has paralleled economic growth. But this connection has been weakened in recent years, according to a new international research study published in the Science Advances journal: here.

Air pollution can accelerate lung disease as much as a pack a day of cigarettes: here.

Breathing dirty air can make you sick. But according to new research, it can also make you more aggressive. That’s the conclusion from a set of studies recently authored by Colorado State University researchers. The team found strong links between short-term exposure to air pollution and aggressive behavior, in the form of aggravated assaults and other violent crimes across the continental United States: here.

Reductions in air pollution yielded fast and dramatic impacts on health outcomes, as well as decreases in all-cause morbidity, according to findings in “Health Benefits of Air Pollution Reduction,” new research published in the American Thoracic Society’s journal, Annals of the American Thoracic Society: here.

As the SARS virus tore through China in 2003, Zuo-Feng Zhang wondered whether the country’s notoriously polluted air might be amplifying its dangers. Sifting through data from five different regions, Zhang’s team concluded that SARS patients living in the most polluted places were twice as likely to die from the disease as those in the cleanest areas. The implications for the current pandemic are dire. [Huff-Post]