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Take a Deep Breath to Celebrate Earth Day

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Earth Day is upon us this Sunday April 22, 2018 and it is time to celebrate by taking a deep breathe!  This might not be the best idea though depending on where you live. The Health Effects Institute (HEI) released a study on Tuesday (04/17/2018) titled “State of Global Air 2018: Over 7 Billion People Face Unsafe Air”.  If we use a conservative estimate of global population today at 7.6 billion, that puts 92% of the world’s population at risk!!

As we see with most environmental issues, it is the developing nations that run the highest risk, and air quality is no different.  As you can see from the cart below, poorer nations are at the highest risk for bad air with levels well above the World Health Organizations interim air quality target of 35 µg/m3, their least stringent mark.  This accounts for almost 60% of the world’s population. The WHO recommends a level less than 10 µg/m3 ambient (outdoor) fine particulate matter concentrations (small dust or soot particles in the air).

A map comparing particulate matter concentrations to WHO guidelines and interim targetsHEI

According to the this report, long term exposure to outdoor and indoor air pollution contributed to 6.1 million premature deaths from stroke, heart attack, lung cancer, and chronic lung disease.  This places bad air up there among the leading causes of death at 4th highest. China and India are the world leaders with air pollution these countries making up over half of the estimated 6.1 million premature deaths.

So, what makes up the measured air pollution in this study?

Here is how the State of Global Air 2018 website explains it;

“Air pollution has many sources. On a global basis, major sources include residential, commercial, and industrial combustion of coal and other fossil fuels for heating and power generation, agricultural practices, residential burning of biomass (wood, dung, and peat) for heating and cooking, and traffic, among others.“

So in other words, human activity is the primary contributor to air pollution, and particularly the activity that surrounds burning fossil fuels.

The number of deaths per country due to air pollution in 2016.HEI

So on this earth day, take a deep breath and think about the air that you are breathing.  You may be risking your life by your activity today.

We need to stop burning fossil fuels because it will save millions of lives.


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