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TUESDAY, March 3, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Ambient air pollution is a leading cause of excess mortality and loss of life expectancy (LLE), according to a study published online March 3 in Cardiovascular Research<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Jos Lelieveld, Ph.D., from the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, and colleagues calculated worldwide exposure to fine particulate matter and ozone pollution using a data-informed atmospheric model, which was combined with the novel Global Exposure Mortality Model to estimate disease-specific excess mortality and LLE. The effects of different pollution sources were investigated using this model.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that from all ambient air pollution, global excess mortality was estimated at 8.8 million\/year, with an LLE of 2.9 years, which is a factor of two higher than previously estimated and exceeds that of tobacco smoking. In East Asia and Europe, the global mean mortality rate of about 120 per 100,000 people\/year was exceeded (196 and 133 per 100,000\/year, respectively). Global mean life expectancy would increase by 1.1 and 1.7 years, respectively, with removal of fossil fuel emissions alone and removal of all potentially controllable anthropogenic emissions.<\/p>\n
“Since the impact of air pollution on public health overall is much larger than expected, and is a worldwide phenomenon, we believe our results show there is an ‘air pollution pandemic,'” a coauthor said in a statement. “Both air pollution and smoking are preventable, but over the past decades much less attention has been paid to air pollution than to smoking, especially among cardiologists.”<\/p>\n