From the “US and European manufacturing was exported to China and India department” and the UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA:
New research shows that more than 5.5 million people die prematurely every year due to household and outdoor air pollution. More than half of deaths occur in two of the world’s fastest growing economies, China and India.
CREDIT Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington
Power plants, industrial manufacturing, vehicle exhaust and burning coal and wood all release small particles into the air that are dangerous to a person’s health. New research, presented today at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), found that despite efforts to limit future emissions, the number of premature deaths linked to air pollution will climb over the next two decades unless more aggressive targets are set.
“Air pollution is the fourth highest risk factor for death globally and by far the leading environmental risk factor for disease,” said Michael Brauer, a professor at the University of British Columbia’s School of Population and Public Health in Vancouver, Canada. “Reducing air pollution is an incredibly efficient way to improve the health of a population.”
For the AAAS meeting, researchers from Canada, the United States, China and India assembled estimates of air pollution levels in China and India and calculated the impact on health.
Their analysis shows that the two countries account for 55 per cent of the deaths caused by air pollution worldwide. About 1.6 million people died of air pollution in China and 1.4 million died in India in 2013.
In China, burning coal is the biggest contributor to poor air quality. Qiao Ma, a PhD student at the School of Environment, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, found that outdoor air pollution from coal alone caused an estimated 366,000 deaths in China in 2013.
Ma also calculated the expected number of premature deaths in China in the future if the country meets its current targets to restrict coal combustion and emissions through a combination of energy policies and pollution controls. She found that air pollution will cause anywhere from 990,000 to 1.3 million premature deaths in 2030 unless even more ambitious targets are introduced.
“Our study highlights the urgent need for even more aggressive strategies to reduce emissions from coal and from other sectors,” said Ma.
In India, a major contributor to poor air quality is the practice of burning wood, dung and similar sources of biomass for cooking and heating. Millions of families, among the poorest in India, are regularly exposed to high levels of particulate matter in their own homes.
“India needs a three-pronged mitigation approach to address industrial coal burning, open burning for agriculture, and household air pollution sources,” said Chandra Venkataraman, professor of Chemical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, in Mumbai, India.
In the last 50 years, North America, Western Europe and Japan have made massive strides to combat pollution by using cleaner fuels, more efficient vehicles, limiting coal burning and putting restrictions on electric power plants and factories.
“Having been in charge of designing and implementing strategies to improve air in the United States, I know how difficult it is. Developing countries have a tremendous task in front of them,” said Dan Greenbaum, president of Health Effects Institute, a non-profit organization based in Boston that sponsors targeted efforts to analyze the health burden from different air pollution sources. “This research helps guide the way by identifying the actions which can best improve public health.”
###
Background:
The research is an extension of the Global Burden of Disease study, an international collaboration led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington that systematically measured health and its risk factors, including air pollution levels, for 188 countries between 1990 and 2013. The air pollution research is led by researchers at the University of British Columbia and the Health Effects Institute.
Additional facts about air pollution:
- World Health Organization (WHO) air quality guidelines set daily particulate matter at 25 micrograms per cubic metre.
- At this time of year, Beijing and New Delhi will see daily levels at or above 300 micrograms per cubic meter metre; 1,200 per cent higher than WHO guidelines.
- While air pollution has decreased in most high-income countries in the past 20 years, global levels are up largely because of South Asia, Southeast Asia, and China. More than 85 per cent of the world’s population now lives in areas where the World Health Organization Air Quality Guideline is exceeded.
- The researchers say that strict control of particulate matter is critical because of changing demographics. Researchers predict that if air pollution levels remain constant, the number of deaths will increase because the population is aging and older people are more susceptible to illnesses caused by poor air quality.
- According to the Global Burden of Disease study, air pollution causes more deaths than other risk factors like malnutrition, obesity, alcohol and drug abuse, and unsafe sex. It is the fourth greatest risk behind high blood pressure, dietary risks and smoking.
- Cardiovascular disease accounts for the majority of deaths from air pollution with additional impacts from lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and respiratory infections.
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I really, really wish we’d get rid of the “premature death” statistic, and instead use something a bit more meaningful. Perhaps something like a number that quantifies the actual reduction in life expectancy.
Yes, there is usually an uptick in the death rate during extreme pollution events, but it’s mostly occurring in a very sick subset of the population, who were likely not expected to survive much longer anyway.
DaveK
The relevant question is, would some or all of them have died anyway? Further, who says that dying ‘from’ a single episode of smoky air means that long term exposure to 50 instead of 25 micrograms per cu m of PM2.5 would have caused them to die even earlier?
Remember there are no actual deaths involved in this calculation. A far more important (theoretically) useful figure would be the number of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALY) but nearly no one has any confidence in claims for DALYs because of how they are modelled. When I mention them people snicker and dismiss all claims.
Something I have notice is that when a DALY number is published, it later emerges in the MSM as a number of deaths. Years become lives. Or lies.
Like everything all aspects of life should be taken into account. Getting rid of indoor cooking over open fires, or just getting rid of cooking over open fires will go a long way to improving health.
China
Between 1990 and 2010, life expectancy at birth in China increased from 69.3 years to 75.7 years.
China’s rate of premature mortality in 2010, for example, was only slightly higher than in the US and lower than all emerging economies in the G20 when accounting for changes in population age.
Rapid change in China brings significant improvements in health
India
Statistics released by the Union ministry of health and family welfare show that life expectancy in India has gone up by five years, from 62.3 years for males and 63.9 years for females in 2001-2005 to 67.3 years and 69.6 years respectively in 2011-2015. Experts attribute this jump — higher than that in the previous decade — to better immunization and nutrition, coupled with prevention and treatment of infectious diseases.
Life expectancy in India goes up by 5 years in a decade
Pakistan
Life expectancy improved for both men and women in Pakistan at an average of 3.4 years gained since 1990, according to a new, comprehensive analysis of trend data from 188 countries.
You could claim that particulates are increasing life expectancy along with quality of of life and the nations wealth.
Sandy
Yes you could make the case that smoke improves lives, but it would be as groundless as the claim that >5m people die per year from PM2.5 inhalation. How about this: how much extra nutritious food compensates fully for an increase in PM2.5 exposure from 50 to 75 micrograms per cu m? Suppose annual average exposure drops from 300 to 20 and the diet improves by 1500 calories per day? Health improves and life is extended. How should the result be apportioned to those two contributors?
It is basically impossible to separate the global burden of disease into contributing percentages, much less assign ‘extra deaths’ to a change in one of them from a higher to lower exposure.
Further, the models of effects (illness and disease) are based on the assumption that all particles have the same toxicity. Check the fine print in the model descriptions.
Headline: Kills
Body: People die prematurely
Not the same thing.
Michael Brauer was co-author on a paper titled, “Health impacts of anthropogenic biomass burning in the developed world” which stated in part, “A conservative estimate of the current contribution of biomass smoke to premature mortality in Europe amounts to at least 40 000 deaths per year.”
http://erj.ersjournals.com/content/46/6/1577
In 2014, there were 25,900 “road fatalities” in the EU which were certainly premature.
http://ec.europa.eu/transport/road_safety/pdf/observatory/trends_figures.pdf
I wonder why there’s no excitement about biomass deaths — maybe it’s the tobacco industry again.
Air quality is a local, regional, and to some extent, national issue. So why on earth is the AAAS concerning itself with air pollution in China, India and elsewhere? How is it any of our concern or business? Unless they have a certain agenda here…
They are part of the effort to stop China burning coal, which is an indirect way of competing economically. Odd, because if China started running their industries on windpower, the cost of windmills would quadruple. Would Warren Buffet still invest in them?
It is a shame that we can get so lost in cynicism that we frequently miss the message. There are far more important things for governments to worry about than a few tenths of a degree of average temperature increase. Things like indoor and outdoor air pollution, for example. This is one of the important points Bjorn Lomborg has been making with his Copenhagen Consensus – climate change is not near the top of the list of the world’s problems.
Government of China – You are killing millions and making hundreds of millions sick by burning coal and not scrubbing the particulates and SO2 out of the exhaust. If you want to help your people, insist that scrubbers be installed on coal-burning furnaces and plants.
Governments of India and Sub-Saharan Africa – You are killings millions and making hundreds of millions sick by forcing people to burn dung to produce heat because you have not installed power plants to generate electricity for your population to use. If you want to make the lives of your people better, provide a more healthful way for your people to heat their homes.
Governments of Indonesia and Brazil – You are killing thousands and making millions sick by uncontrolled burning of grasslands and forest to support agriculture. Find a better way to clear your land and you can improve the lives of your population and that of your neighbors.
All governments of the developing world – Stop pretending that the poor health of your people is the fault of the U.S. and Western Europe. Go to work to improve the well-being of your people. If you need us to help you with technologies or funding some projects, we may be able to help. But stop demanding that we hand you (the governments) a wad of cash as some sort of penance or recompense for our prior bad acts.
+1
Exactly. The thumb-sucking climate fraudsters have trumped the real issue, which is regular old air and water pollution. The crony capitalists and their government enablers of the third world thank you, Michael Mann et. al., for letting them get away with murder.
China, India – that’s what you get when you burn dung inside a house for cooking
Missing from the report is any useful information such as:
Average age at death for those attributed to pollution
Average age at death for those not attributed to pollution
How have these numbers changed over time
Using unquantified claims as they do we have no idea if this is a problem or just an interesting conversation piece. Will file under “Stupid” until some data are provided.
There is virtually no data. It is Monte Carlo simulations based on guesses of what the range of parameters and effects are.
5.5 million is a lot of bodies, but I have not seen any. If this study was true their would be no people alive in china, an actual experiment, not junk science.
In 17 years of practice as a pathologist, I’ve never signed “air pollution” as a cause of death. Air pollution at ordinary levels is not a significant topic in medical litterature. It is essentially impossible to measure the effect of air pollution on health because their are too many confounding variables. Where do the authors of these studies get their numbers from?
Where do the authors of these studies get their numbers from?
They do a cranial/rectal inversion.
Manny (8:56 am)
And THAT, gentlemen and ladies, is science.
Contrasted with these professionals, the climate clowns styling themselves “scientists” are seen for the science buffoons they are.
Congratulations to you, Dr. Emmanuel, and to your profession.
Yes absolutely. On the other hand, my son has asthma. The doc told us, if we’d relocate to a place in the mountains, my son would have much less problems with his lungs because of the cleaner air.
This also is science. Observable and reproducible. Unfortunately not very practical for us.
So I do believe that pollution has a health impact. But to get from there to a ‘prematural death’ number seems impossible for me, as each human live is unique. You can’t answer the ‘what would have happened if …’ questions.
Further, the human being is NOT a machine. How much impact has the mindset?
As a friend of me once said: Thinking sh*t is worse than smoking cigarettes.
Manny – well said. The numbers are from simulations of deaths from simulations of exposure from simulations of air movements plus simulations of emissions based on estimates of the masses of fuels burned and their estimated locations. That is how the numbers for China were produced. I know of no other methods used to generate them. There were some ‘clinical observations’ done in the mid-90’s in India using numerous assumptions and assumed parameters for modelling the impact, particularly on children and upper respiratory tract infections. They did not control for parasites, weather or nutrition.
When I objected to the claims being bandied about I was told (by Berkeley) to keep quiet and “a lot of money will come into the cookstove sector”. Read into that what you will.
I suspect the agenda isn’t the “concern” for air quality in undeveloped and developing countries (assuming it’s any of our business to begin with), but rather a blanket blaming of all fossil fuels, and most especially coal for premature deaths. In other words, coal is evil, and nobody should be using it because, “pollution”. It’s a backdoor way of sidestepping the increasingly problematic CO2 faux issue.
Bruce:
Spot on.
The crony capitalists and their government enablers, especially in the third world, love the climate change alarmists. Keeping that fraud on the front burner helps them dodge the real issues of regular old air and water pollution. Which — for all you libertarians out there — happen to be in the proper province of government regulation.
Just because I live upstream from you, doesn’t mean I am at liberty to foul your water free of charge. Or wouldn’t, in a sane world. Thank you Michael Mann et. al. for allowing me to get away with murder.
Safe sex is the solution: the fewer births, the fewer deaths.
Irrational economic principles will cause significant destruction of per capita wealth which does harm people; some fatally so. Also, such irrational economic principles block formation of increases of per capita wealth above some subsistence level.
Severe lack of per capita wealth is linked to lack of funds to implement even the most minimal pollution controls. N’est ce pas?
So, the question is what economic principles are so profoundly irrational that they cause significant destruction of per capita wealth? And likewise, what irrational economic principles also block formation of increases of per capita wealth above some subsistence level?
John
I’m sure the White heterosexual male is somehow behind it all. Probably the Koch brothers. 😉
….Christian…
“the number of deaths will increase because the population is aging and older people are more susceptible to illnesses caused by poor air quality”
Amazing. If the population is aging, then it must have aged in spite of ‘poor air quality’. If the poor air is causing premature deaths, how has the population managed to age?
George: surplus people will no longer be ageing.
In a follow-up to the 350.org sponsored agitation to get Queens University in Kingston Ontario to divest itself of all ‘fossil fuel investments’ and impose that condition on any fund they did invest in has arrived in Waterloo. Waterloo’s investments are being targeted in an identical campaign minus the obvious presence of 350.org.
This dog and pony show is aimed at the closure of the entire oil industry in Canada. It was defeated in Kingston. One of the prof engineers submitted that to deny poor people access to cheap fuels was a crime against humanity. Look for a letter to the editor of the Waterloo Chronicle, next edition, which the editor says they will print, pointing out that this campaign seeks to take liquid fuels literally off the market, dismounting Asians on 100cc motorcycles and having them walk instead.
If a hearing is held in Waterloo, Ontarioans and alumni should feel free to contribute to the discussion.
It is interesting that if you add up the claimed outdoor air induced deaths and indoor air pollution deaths the number is much higher than 5.5 million, by at least two million. I wonder how they were so miraculously saved from certain death.
I see Swaziland in Southern Africa with a population of 1.1m I in the “under 4000 deaths per year’ category. It would be a bit of a surprise if it weren’t.
The metric is inappropriate. They are just trying to make China and India look bad by reporting the total (modelled) deaths instead of the number per unit population. The suggestion above of deaths per 100,000 population is sensible and would provide a completely different map colouring. For China the number would be 56. For democratic Republic of Congo it would be 200. How many people in the DRC live long enough to die of smoke inhalation?
The numbers on the map, even if true, tell us nothing about where to spend money solving problems.
Given that “your graph has the wrong units” is so completely obvious at first glance, cross off “American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS),” as source of actual science. Might as well call them “American Association for the Advancement of Cargo Cult Science (AACCS)”
Formula: x is bad. Give us money.
Death by air pollution: largely a matter of particulate matter, which is largely a matter of indoor open fires.
The “West” for decades could have been pushing for infrastructure development, such as running electricity into the various corners of India and Africa.
Instead, what have we devoted energy to in India and Africa?
Population control, by working to overrule the individual lives and choices of the locals and pressure them to abide by our goals of birth control use, and abortion. Everywhere in the UN stuff on Pop Control, you see “access to abortion” either directly stated, or represented by euphemism and code.
My grandfather lived his whole life in a house where all the cooking and heating was done on a wood stove or heater. Unfortunately as a result he passed away prematurely at the age of 92.
And my father only made it to 93. He also had an oil heater.
Gerald good stuff. My mother passed 18 month ago 5 days short of 95. She immigrated from Newfoundland to Toronto and joined the Cdn., Army.and meet my Dad. I would ask her way she lived so long answer Cod liver oil and Sardines I kid you not.
My father smoked 2 packs of Players Plain a day. Started becoming ill at 69. I remember [ Dad cut out the salt, stop with all that butter use margarine, stop with all that fat dripping on your mash potatoes, cut the fat of your pork chop. Remember this was early 80’s cholesterol was the main topic on all news media just like Climate Change today. I was so so WRONG. He passed at 70.
It was the smoke wot dunnit.
it would be interesting to look at the life expectancy in china and india…
http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly=2003;lb=f;il=t;fs=11;al=30;stl=t;st=t;nsl=t;se=t$wst;tts=C$ts;sp=5.59290322580644;ti=2015$zpv;v=0$inc_x;mmid=XCOORDS;iid=ti;by=ind$inc_y;mmid=YCOORDS;iid=1iHsRp1TARpgh2CbuZGP5fj6jeY3Iz5cBLKTDlukVSHI;by=ind$inc_s;uniValue=8.21;iid=phAwcNAVuyj0XOoBL_n5tAQ;by=ind$inc_c;uniValue=255;gid=CATID0;by=grp$map_x;scale=lin;dataMin=1950;dataMax=2015$map_y;scale=lin;dataMin=16;dataMax=92$map_s;sma=50;smi=2$cd;bd=0$inds=i44_t001950,,,,;i101_t001950,,,,
premature deaths may be but if i give you 2 and take you one….
How much blame should be assigned to President Obama since he has allowed China to continue to build more coal fired power plants until 2030 while the US must shut down it’s clean coal fired plants because of CO2. Obviously shutting down industry in the US and moving it to China is contributing to continued dirty coal fired plants in China where the particulate problem is especially more prevalent.
Will there be a spike in lung related deaths in countries that are fracking their way to glory.
“Authors of the new study, published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, say they focused on Pennsylvania because it has one of highest residential radon levels in the country, and because the state has a huge, detailed database of home radon measures. Researchers found that radon levels fluctuated from 1989 to 2004. But radon levels in the state began to rise around 2004, when fracking really took off, the study says.” http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/04/09/radon-fracking-study/25466893/#
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radon
I would humbly suggest that wind turbines are killing a hellava lot more birds than they air they breathe.
“10% of al deaths were from air pollution in 2013.”
And yet, air pollution was listed as Cause of Death on a big fat zero autopsy reports. These people have fabricated every single number in this ridiculous non-study..