Air pollution kills more people than smoking

Air pollution is killing more people every year than smoking, according to research published last week that called for urgent action to stop burning fossil fuels. According to a Cape Argus report, researchers in Germany and Cyprus estimated that air pollution caused 8.8m extra deaths in 2015 – almost double the previously estimated 4.5m. The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimates smoking kills about 7m people a year globally. The researchers found that in Europe – the key focus of the European Society of Cardiology research – air pollution caused an estimated 790 000 deaths, between 40% and 80% of them from cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and stroke. ‘Since most of the particulate matter and other air pollutants in Europe come from the burning of fossil fuels, we need to switch to other sources for generating energy urgently,’ said co-author Professor Jos Lelieveld, of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and the Cyprus Institute in Cyprus. ‘When we use clean, renewable energy, we are not just fulfilling the Paris Agreement to mitigate the effects of climate change, we could also reduce air pollution-related death rates in Europe by up to 55%.’ ‘To put this into perspective, this means that air pollution causes more deaths a year than tobacco smoking,’ said co-author Professor Thomas Munzel, of the Department of Cardiology of the University Medical Centre Mainz. ‘Smoking is avoidable but air pollution is not.’

South Korea has passed emergency measures to tackle the ‘social disaster’ being unleashed by air pollution, after record levels of fine dust blanketed most of the country in recent weeks. According to a report in The Guardian, the National Assembly passed a series of Bills last week giving authorities access to emergency funds for measures that include the mandatory installation of high-capacity air purifiers in classrooms and encouraging sales of liquified petroleum gas vehicles, which produce lower emissions than those that run on petrol and diesel. The measures will give government officials access to a $2.65bn emergency fund, as criticism mounts of President Moon Jae-in’s failure to tackle the crisis. Air pollution has become a key political issue after the concentration of fine dust particles surged to record levels in many parts of the country last week, according to South Korean media. Seven major cities suffered record-high concentrations of dangerous PM 2.5 particles, according to the National Institute of Environmental Research. The crisis has also created friction with China, which South Korean public health experts say is responsible for between 50% and 70% of fine dust pollution in the Seoul area, home to almost half the country’s population. Experts say the particles, from Chinese deserts and factories, are carried to the Korean peninsula by prevailing westerly winds. Chinese officials, however, rejected the claims, and urged South Korea to first determine if its own factories, power plants and vehicles were to blame.