2,000 children die each day from air pollution-linked health problems: report

Nearly 2,000 children die every day from health problems linked to air pollution, which is now the second-largest risk factor for early death worldwide, a report said on Wednesday.

Exposure to air pollution contributed to the deaths of 8.1 million people – around 12 per cent of all fatalities – in 2021, according to the report from the US-based Health Effects Institute.

This means air pollution has overtaken tobacco use and poor diet to become the second leading risk factor for early death, behind only high blood pressure, it said.

Little kids are particularly vulnerable to air pollution, and the institute partnered with the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef) for its annual State of Global Air report.

Air pollution contributed to the deaths of more than 700,000 children under the age of five, the report found.

More than 500,000 of those deaths were attributed to cooking indoors using dirty fuels such as coal, wood or dung, mostly in Africa and Asia.

“These are problems we know that we can solve,” said Pallavi Pant, the Health Effects Institute’s head of global health.

Nearly every person in the world breathes unhealthy levels of air pollution every day, the report found.

Over 90 per cent of the deaths were linked to tiny airborne pollutants called PM2.5, which measure 2.5 micrometers or fewer, it said.

Inhaling PM2.5 has been found to increase the risk of lung cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and a range of other health problems.

The report aimed to link the rates of such diseases with air pollution levels.

But despite the “pretty stark” figures, the report could still be underestimating air pollution’s impact, Pant said.

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All but one of the world’s worst polluted cities are in Asia, 83 of which are in one country

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