New research finds air pollution is more deadly than smoking

According to the team at EPIC, many countries are failing to improve their air quality because they have yet to build the appropriate infrastructure to do so.

For example, the report points to countries in Asia and Africa that are known to have the highest deaths related to poor air quality. But only 6.8 and 3.7 percent of governments in these countries, respectively, have granted the public access to open-air quality data.

The researchers stated that Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and Pakistan are the top six countries suffering from high levels of air pollution. Here, people are expected to lose six years of their lives simply from the air they’re breathing daily.

The WHO has recommended that air pollution levels must be kept below 5 μg/m3. New Delhi, India has an annual average fine particle matter rate of 126.5 μg/m3.

The Global Fund, an amazing organisation dedicated to raising and investing funds that help end epidemics around the world, currently spends over $4 billion USD a year to fight diseases such as malaria, TB, and HIV.

However, if the air people are breathing is almost guaranteed to make them sick, dedicating an additional portion of new funding to reducing fine particulate matter should be a priority going forward.

When striving to create stronger environmental policies related to air quality, China can be looked to as a successful leader that had to learn from its own experiences.

In 2013, the government recognised its poor air quality was causing a national public health crisis that was killing 1.1 million people each year. It planted 35 billion trees across 12 provinces and set in motion the Air Pollution Action Plan, which restricted car use and coal burning in major cities.

This led to fine particle matter in the air dropping by 33 percent in Beijing and 15 percent in the Pearl River Delta.

Though its air pollution levels remain six times higher than the WHO recommendation, the country is on the right track for improvement. If current progress continues, citizens can expect to live 2.4 years longer than they would’ve before, according to recent research.

Of course, China’s economic boom played a huge role in enabling the country to tackle its air pollution dilemma. Other countries will likely face challenges related to funding and may have to rely on charitable organisations or investors to do so.

Let’s hope more reports like the one from EPIC can offer stronger motivations for identifying solutions.