Over 1.2 M early deaths in India due to air pollution

CONTEXT:

  • A global report has found that life expectancy of children born today will be shortened by 20 months on average, growing up in current high levels of air pollution.
  • According to a study, conducted by the Boston-headquartered Health Effects Institute, the situation in South Asia is much worse with the life expectancy shortened by two years and six months.
  • The institutes’s State of Global Air Report 2019, released today, said that overall long-term exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution contributed to nearly 5 million deaths across the world from stroke, diabetes, heart attack, lung cancer, and chronic lung disease in 2017.
  • This means that air pollution contributed to nearly one in every 10 deaths in 2017, making it a bigger killer than malaria, malnutrition, and road accidents.
  • The report said that out of the 5 million, 3 million deaths are directly attributed to PM2.5, half of which is from India and China together. The analysis found that China and India together were responsible for over half of the total global attributable deaths, with each country facing over 1.2 million deaths from all air pollution in 2017.
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