Air pollution causes premature death of 1,200 young Europeans annually

According to the EEA’s latest assessment, dirty air kills well over a thousand under 18s across the continent every year and significantly increases the risk of disease later in life.

Despite improvements in recent years, ‘the level of key air pollutants in many European countries remains stubbornly above World Health Organisation’ guidelines.

This is according to the European Environmental Agency, which assessed over 30 nations across the continent, including the 27 members of the EU and excluding Russia, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom (suggesting that the overall death tolls could be higher).

The study – the EEA’s first to focus specifically on children and teenagers – uncovered that air pollution causes over 1,200 premature deaths annually in people under the age of 18.

Exposing youth to air that falls below healthy standards and delaying the clean-up of the sources of pollution also means that many thousands more are afflicted with physical and mental health problems that could have lifelong impacts, as revealed by the EEA.

‘You can’t think about children as little adults, when it comes to air pollution,’ said Gerardo Sanchez Martinez, an expert in environment and health at the EEA.

‘They receive more pollution, and it starts in the womb and continues in kindergarten and onwards. We are failing our children on air pollution.’

As he alludes to, children and teenagers are particularly susceptible to dirty air, as pollutants can have a permanent effect on their development.

In fact, research has linked air pollution to low birth weight and has proved that breathing in high levels of pollutants during childhood inhibits lung capacity, causes asthma, and leads to an increased risk of allergies and diseases such as ear infections later down the line.