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SCIENCEThursday 17 September
Study: Air pollution kills 3.3M worldwide, may double
SETH BORENSTEIN In this Sept. 10, 2015 file photo, a man covers his nose during a hazy day in Singapore. Air pollution transported downwind to
AP Science Writer is killing 3.3 million people a year worldwide, according to a new study that includes this surprise: the next city, he said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Air Farming plays a large role in smog and soot deaths in industrial nations. “We were very surprised,
pollution is killing 3.3 million but in the end it makes
people a year worldwide, Associated Press sense,” Lelieveld said. He
according to a new study said the scientists had as-
that includes this surprise: sure to ambient air pollu- HIV and malaria combined, ing to the study. Worldwide, sumed that traffic and
Farming plays a large role Lelieveld said. agriculture is the No. 2 power plants would be the
in smog and soot deaths in tion. This number is higher With nearly 1.4 million cause with 664,100 deaths, biggest cause of deadly
industrial nations. deaths a year, China has behind the more than 1 mil- soot and smog.
Scientists in Germany, Cy- than most experts would the most air pollution fatali- lion deaths from in-home Agricultural emissions are
prus, Saudi Arabia and ties, followed by India with heating and cooking done becoming increasingly im-
Harvard University calcu- have expected, say, 10 645,000 and Pakistan with with wood and other biofu- portant but are not regu-
lated the most detailed es- 110,000. els in developing world. lated, said Allen Robinson,
timates yet of the toll of air years ago,” said Jason The United States, with The problem with farms is an engineering professor
pollution, looking at what 54,905 deaths in 2010 from ammonia from fertilizer and at Carnegie Mellon Univer-
caused it. The study also West, a University of North soot and smog, ranks sev- animal waste, Lelieveld sity, who wasn’t part of the
projects that if trends don’t enth highest for air pollution said. study but praised it.
change, the yearly death Carolina environmen- deaths. What’s unusual is That ammonia then com- Ammonia air pollution from
total will double to about that the study says that ag- bines with sulfates from farms can be reduced “at
6.6 million a year by 2050. tal sciences professor who riculture caused 16,221 of coal-fired power plants and relatively low costs,” Rob-
The study, published those deaths, second only nitrates from car exhaust to inson said. “Maybe this will
Wednesday in the journal wasn’t part of the study but to 16,929 deaths blamed form the soot particles that help bring more attention
Nature, used health statis- on power plants. are the big air pollution kill- to the issue.”
tics and computer mod- praised it. In the U.S. Northeast, all of ers, he said. In London, for In the central United States,
els. About three quarters of Europe, Russia, Japan and example, the pollution from the main cause of soot and
the deaths are from strokes Air pollution kills more than South Korea, agriculture is traffic takes time to be con- smog premature deaths is
and heart attacks, said the No. 1 cause of the soot verted into soot, and then it power plants; in much of
lead author Jos Lelieveld at and smog deaths, accord- is mixed with ammonia and the West, it’s traffic emis-
the Max Planck Institute for sions.
Chemistry in Germany. Jason West and other out-
The findings are similar to side scientists did dispute
other less detailed pollution the study’s projections
death estimates, outside that deaths would double
experts said. by 2050. That’s based on
“About 6 percent of all no change in air pollution.
global deaths each occur West and others said it’s
prematurely due to expo- likely that some places,
such as China, will dramati-
cally cut their air pollution
by 2050.
And Lelieveld said that if
the world reduces a dif-
ferent air pollutant — car-
bon dioxide, the main gas
causing global warming
— soot and smog levels
will be reduced as well, in
a “win-win situation in both
directions.”q
