200 million people will die in the next 45 years due to air pollution!

Air pollution shortens human life. It causes the same pain and suffering to everyone from children to adults. This increases food production and in turn reduces production when more people need to be fed. This is not just an economic issue, it is a question of ethics.

Air pollution is created from both inside and outside. For the poor family, the smoke from the firewood or the smoke from the stove is a serious problem. When there is economic development, new means of energy consumption like factories, industries, automobiles, urbanization, air pollution has become an even bigger issue.

New clean technologies have become available with the potential to improve air quality. But still short-sighted policy makers are shirking irresponsibly by showing the cost of operations. Economic growth and increased demand for energy have made it inevitable that air pollution will be exacerbated and that ozone depletion and air pollution will increase.

According to a report by The Economic Consequences of Outdoor Air Pollution and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), air pollution is expected to cause 6 to 9 million premature deaths each year by 2060, with one person dying every four to five seconds. In other words, 200 million people will die in the next 45 years due to air pollution.

Other polluting diseases will also increase. The new problem of bronchitis in children between the ages of six and 12 is estimated to increase from the current 12 million to 36 million annually by 2060. In the case of adults, such problems are estimated to increase from the current 3.5 million to 100 million per year by 2060.

The number of children suffering from asthma is also increasing. The number of hospital admissions due to pollution problems, which was 3.6 million per year in 2010, is estimated to reach 11 million per year by 2060.

Health problems will be exacerbated, especially in cities like China and India, which have high population densities and high levels of pollutants. Depending on the density of the elderly or adult population that can quickly be affected by air pollution, mortality rates are likely to rise in other parts of Asia, such as Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and South Korea.

The effects of air pollution are often expressed in dollars. By 2060, health problems caused by polluted air, also known as economists' dis utilitarianism, will be lost by 3.75 billion working days. As a direct market effect, there will be a decline in the efficiency of workers, an increase in healthcare costs, a decline in agricultural production and a decline in GDP of more than one per cent, an annual loss of Rs 26 trillion by 2060.

The price to be paid for air pollution, no matter how high it may seem in dollars, is still not the real price. It does not cover the actual cost of untimely death, respiratory and heart problems and pain and suffering caused by toxic gas, nor does it include the value of the effect on the child's psyche from being forced to wear a mask to avoid foul air even when playing or walking. These constraints cannot be measured by any price standard.

But in reality, policy makers often recognize the standard of numbers rather than empirical experience. Therefore, the OECD has repeatedly conducted in-depth studies on the value of the effects of air pollution on human health.

On average, a person would be willing to pay about डलर 30 per million every year to cover the risk of untimely death from air pollution. This is an attempt to measure the amount that is considered 'ready to pay' by using the prevailing technology based on the readiness shown by the people to prevent untimely death due to external pollution. An example of this is the OCD's Mortality Risk Valuation in Environment, Health and Transport Policy.

From this point of view, the loss due to untimely death due to external causes due to air pollution is estimated to be 180 to 250 trillion per annum by 2060. Logically, this is not a 'real value' because such things do not get a price in the market, but untimely deaths due to pollution can be reduced if the right policy is decided in time and implemented effectively.

Now, instead of the government complaining about the cost of air pollution prevention, it should invest in health care to reduce the impact on human life if pollution is not controlled. The life of a citizen will depend on the policy of the government of each country.