Air pollution is killing almost 8.8 million people each year—more annual deaths than tobacco smoking, HIV, and vector-borne illnesses such as malaria and dengue, according to a new study from a European research team.
The authors of the paper called air pollution a pandemic, according to a March 2, 2020 Gizmodo article.
Aaron Bernstein, interim director of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment (C-CHANGE), who didn’t work on the study, told Gizmodo that reducing the main source of air pollution, fossil fuels, is a huge challenge because people rely on gas for their cars and electricity in their homes.
“We are benefiting from fossil fuels, and so to say they’re a problem is challenging because we’re so enmeshed in them,” he said. “We’re so dependent on them, and yet they’re killing us.”
Read the Gizmodo article: Air Pollution Kills More People a Year Than Cigarettes, And Fossil Fuels Are Why