According to a report released on Wednesday, air pollution-related health issues claim the lives of about 2,000 children every day, making it the second largest risk factor for premature mortality globally.
According to a report published in 2021 by the US-based Health Effects Institute, 8.1 million people died as a result of air pollution exposure, accounting for around 12 percent of all fatalities.
This indicates that, after high blood pressure, air pollution is now the second most important risk factor for premature death, surpassing both tobacco use and poor diet.
For its annual State of Global Air study, the institute collaborated with UNICEF, the UN Children’s Fund, in recognition of the special vulnerability of young children to air pollution.
The study discovered that over 700,000 children under the age of five died as a result of air pollution.
Over 500,000 of those fatalities—mostly in Asia and Africa—were linked to indoor cooking using unclean fuels like coal, wood, or dung.
“These are problems we know that we can solve,” Pallavi Pant, the Health Effects Institute’s head of global health, told AFP.
