Air pollution from burning fossil fuels has been linked to 8.7 million premature deaths a year worldwide, more than double the previous estimate. The new figures also suggest there are around three times as many deaths from dirty air in the UK as listed in official figures.
Researchers say the bigger short-term health impact should add urgency to ongoing efforts to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, in addition to the need to act because of the longer-term threat those fuels pose as drivers of climate change.
The number of premature deaths globally from fine particles released by burning coal, oil and gas 鈥� known as PM2.5 鈥� has . Eloise Marais at University College London, who worked on the new estimate, says the higher toll she and her colleagues calculated appears to be a consequence of their model factoring in recent studies that provide a better account of the health impact not only of high concentrations of PM2.5 but also of very low concentrations.
Advertisement
Another factor is that more detailed figures have now been made available from Asia, Europe and North America.
鈥淓verything is trending towards a much more severe health outcome associated with air pollution exposure than we once thought,鈥� says Marais. The new estimate means that 75 per cent of all premature deaths linked with air pollution globally are down to PM2.5 from fossil fuels, so Marais thinks the research should add 鈥済reater urgency鈥� to efforts to cut fossil fuel use. 鈥淚t highlights that there鈥檚 an important near-term consequence of fossil fuels,鈥� she says.
To produce their estimates, the researchers used the latest data on fossil fuel emission sources, such as power plants, and simulated how air pollution would spread in regions. Next, they checked how those results compared with actual observations of PM2.5. The health impacts of exposure to the particles were then modelled using regional data on populations and deaths.
India accounted for most of the early deaths, at 2.5 million per year, which Marais says wasn鈥檛 surprising because the country has failed to implement 鈥渕ature鈥� measures to tackle air pollution. Second highest was China with 2.4 million, although this is an estimated 1.5 million fewer annual premature deaths than would have occurred in the country without the decline in coal burning seen there between 2012 and 2018.
The number of annual premature deaths in the UK was 99,000, far higher than the the UK government estimates from all sources of air pollution.
Journal reference:
