Air Pollution: How Toxic Air Can Reduce Your Life

 Air Pollution: How Toxic Air Can Reduce Your Life

According to an important study, air pollution also played a role in the death of 4.9 million people in 2017.

The study found that polluted air reduced life expectancy by an average of 1 year and 8 months worldwide.

The report, prepared by the Health Effects Institute, monitored equipment from satellites and collected data on about 10,000 air pollutants.

He compared the figures to how much air pollution affects health and how many people died in 2017 from toxic air.

Some of the key findings of the report

Air pollution is more dangerous than obesity:

The study is based on data from the Global Burden of Disease Project, which has created a series of major health hazards around the world.

Air pollution is the fifth most common cause of food poisoning, high blood pressure, smoking and high blood sugar. Being overweight is the sixth leading cause of death.

This sequence of health risks is based on hundreds of studies that have shown that air pollution increases the risk of heart, respiratory infections and diseases and even cancer.

Preventing air pollution in South Asia would have the same benefits as curing cancer by increasing the average life expectancy.

The effects of air pollution are particularly damaging in South Asia

Worldwide, air pollution reduces life expectancy by 20 percent, but the effects are still severe in South Asia.

In Nepal, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the life expectancy of a newborn baby is estimated to decrease by 30 months due to polluted air.

It is thought to have the same effect on life expectancy as cancer.

It's not just pollution that lowers the average life expectancy. The fact is that many of these countries cannot even manage the effects on the health system.

Diabetes due to the effect of air pollution

Air pollution (especially PM2.5) is the third leading cause of type 2 diabetes after high blood sugar and obesity.

A study in the United States found that some retired people who had not had diabetes for eight years had a link between type 2 diabetes and even a small amount of air pollution.

It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the post.

One theory is that when this happens, the insulin-producing cells burn, which affects the amount of insulin that regulates blood sugar levels.

This is not just a city problem

Of the 1.6 million deaths due to air pollution in 2017, indoor air pollution was the leading cause of death.

Burning firewood for cooking causes air pollution.

866 million people in China and 452 million people in India burn firewood.

But in China and India, the number of people cooking with firewood has dropped significantly.

In many African countries, more than 70 percent of the population uses firewood for cooking.

Toxic air kills older people than children

The news about the impact of air pollution on children is often reported in the media. But 9 out of 10 people over the age of 50 die from air pollution.

This is a relatively new situation. In 1990, children under the age of five were most at risk from the effects of toxic air.

The biggest problem at that time was indoor air pollution. But that has changed with the decline in the number of firewood burners in India and China.

The biggest threat now is PM2.5, which increases the risk of lung, heart disease and cancer. Which appears in most adults.

In addition, scientists have found that those who breathe for a long time are more likely to be exposed to toxic air as their effects increase.

But there is also good news

The number of people living in hazardous areas around the world has risen from 96 percent in 1990 to 92 percent in 2017.

Most of those improvements came in the United States, where it fell from 50 percent to 3 percent.

China has also improved a lot in the last four years. On an annual average, PM has dropped 2.5 per cent, but pollution levels are still much higher than safe.

According to the study, 852,000 deaths in China in 2017 were due to air pollution.