The International and Multi-Regional Membership Center of Latinos in the USA
Welcome to you all!
World Pollution Deadlier than Wars, Disasters and Hunger
Threatens The Continuing Survival Of Human Societies
PuraVidaCommunity
Pollution kills at least nine million people and costs trillions of dollars every year, according to the most comprehensive global analysis to date, which
warns the crisis “threatens the continuing survival of human societies”. The Guardian - Damian Carrington
If you want to offer us your opinion, click on the button labeled My Opinion. Thank you.
POLLUTION - noun - the presence in or introduction into the environment of a
substance or thing that has harmful or poisonous effects.
Pollution, also called environmental pollution, the addition of any substance (solid,
liquid, or gas) or any form of energy (such as heat, sound, or radioactivity) to the
environment at a rate faster than it can be dispersed, diluted, decomposed,
recycled, or stored in some harmless form. The major kinds of pollution are
(classified by environment) air pollution, water pollution, and land pollution.
Modern society is also concerned about specific types of pollutants, such as noise
pollution, light pollution, and even plastic pollution.
OCTOBER 25, 2017
NEW DELHI (AP) – Environmental pollution—from filthy air to contaminated water—is killing more people every year than all war and violence in the
world. More than smoking, hunger or natural disasters. More than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined.
One out of every six premature deaths in the world in 2015—about 9 million—could be attributed to disease from toxic exposure, according to a major
study released October 19 in the Lancet medical journal. The financial cost from pollution-related death, sickness and welfare is equally massive, the report
says, costing some $4.6 trillion in annual losses—or about 6.2 percent of the global economy.
“There’s been a lot of study of pollution, but it’s never received the resources or level of attention as, say, AIDS or climate change,” said epidemiologist
Philip Landrigan, dean of global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, and the lead author of the report.
The report marks the first attempt to pull together data on disease and death caused by all forms
of pollution combined.
“Pollution is a massive problem that people aren’t seeing because they’re looking at scattered
bits of it,” Dr. Landrigan said.
Experts say the 9 million premature deaths the study found was just a partial estimate, and the
number of people killed by pollution is undoubtedly higher and will be quantified once more
research is done and new methods of assessing harmful impacts are developed.
Areas like sub-Saharan Africa have yet to even set up air pollution monitoring systems. Soil
pollution has received scant attention. And there are still plenty of potential toxins still being
ignored, with less than half of the 5,000 new chemicals widely dispersed throughout the
environment since 1950 having been tested for safety or toxicity.
“In the West, we got the lead out of the gasoline, so we thought lead was handled. We got rid
of the burning rivers, cleaned up the worst of the toxic sites. And then all of those discussions
went into the background” just as industry began booming in developing nations, said Richard
Fuller, head of the global toxic watchdog Pure Earth and one of the 47 scientists, policymakers
and public health experts who contributed to the 51-page report.
“To some extent these countries look to the West for examples and discussion, and we’d
dropped it,” Mr. Fuller said.
Asia and Africa are the regions putting the most people at risk, the
study found, while India tops the list of individual countries.
One out of every four premature deaths in India in 2015, or some 2.5
million, was attributed to pollution. China’s environment was the
second deadliest, with more than 1.8 million premature deaths, or
one in five, blamed on pollution-related illness, the study found.
Several other countries such Bangladesh, Pakistan, North Korea,
South Sudan and Haiti also see nearly a fifth of their premature
deaths caused by pollution.
Still, many poorer countries have yet to make pollution control a
priority, experts say. India has taken some recent actions, such as
tightening vehicle and factory emission standards and occasionally
limiting the number of cars on New Delhi’s roads. But they have done
little about crop burning, garbage fires, construction dust or rampant
use of the dirtiest fossil fuels.
A court ban on firework sales before the yearly Diwali festival did not
stop New Delhi residents from firing rockets and lighting crackers throughout the night of October 19. They awoke the next morning to acrid, smoke-filled
skies and levels of dangerous, lung-clogging particulate matter known as PM2.5 that went beyond 900 parts per million—90 times the recommended limit
by the World Health Organization, and 22 times higher than India’s own limits.
“Even though better pollution norms are coming in, still the pollution levels are continuously increasing,” said Shambhavi Shukla, a research associate with
the Delhi-based Center for Science and Environment, which was not involved in the Lancet study.
To reach its figures on the overall global pollution burden, the study’s authors used methods outlined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for
assessing field data from soil tests, as well as with air and water pollution data from the Global Burden of Disease, an ongoing study run by institutions
including the World Health Organization and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
Even the conservative estimate of 9 million pollution-related deaths is one-and-a-half times higher than the number of people killed by smoking, three
times the number killed by AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, more than six times the number killed in road accidents, and 15 times the number
killed in war or other forms of violence, according to GBD tallies.
It is most often the world’s poorest who suffer, the study found. The vast majority of
pollution-related deaths—92 percent—occur in low- or middle-income countries, where
policy makers are chiefly concerned with developing their economies, lifting people out of
poverty and building basic infrastructure. Environmental regulations in those countries tend
to be weaker, and industries lean on outdated technologies and dirtier fuels.
In wealthier countries where overall pollution is not as rampant, it is still the poorest
communities that are more often exposed, the report says.
“What people don’t realize is that pollution does damage to economies. People who are
sick or dead cannot contribute to the economy. They need to be looked after”—which is
also costly, Mr. Fuller said.
“There is this myth that finance ministers still live by, that you have to let industry pollute or
else you won’t develop,” he said. “It just isn’t true.”
The report cites EPA research showing that the U.S. has gained
some $30 in benefits for every dollar spent on controlling air
pollution since 1970, when Congress enacted the Clean Air Act,
one of the world’s most ambitious environmental laws.
Removing lead from gasoline has earned the U.S. economy
another $6 trillion cumulatively since 1980, according to studies
by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some experts cautioned, however, that the report’s economic
message was murky. Reducing the pollution quantified in the
report might impact production, and so would not likely
translate into gains equal to the $4.6 trillion in economic losses.
The report “highlights the social and economic justice of this
issue,” said Marc Jeuland, associate professor with the Sanford
School of Public Policy and the Duke Global Health Institute at Duke University, who was not involved in the study.
Without more concrete evidence for how specific policies might lead to economic gains, “policy makers will often find it difficult to take action, and this
report thus only goes part way in making the case for action,” he said.
Mr. Jeuland also noted that, while the report counts mortality by
each pollutant, there are possible overlaps—for example,
someone exposed to both air pollution and water
contamination—and actions to address one pollutant may not
reduce mortality.
“People should be careful not to extrapolate from the U.S.
numbers on net (economic) benefits, because the net effects of
pollution control will not be equivalent across locations,” he
said.
The study’s conclusions on the economic cost of pollution
measure lost productivity and healthcare costs, while also
considering studies measuring people’s “willingness to pay” to
reduce the probability of dying. While these types of studies
yield estimates at best, they are used by many governments and
economists trying to understand how societies value individual
lives.
While there has never been an international declaration on
pollution, the topic is gaining traction.
The World Bank in April declared that reducing pollution, in all
forms, would now be a global priority. And in December, the United Nations will host its first pollution conference.
“The relationship between pollution and poverty is very clear,” said Ernesto Sanchez-Triana, lead environmental specialist at the World Bank. “And
controlling pollution would help us address many other problems, from climate change to malnutrition. The linkages can’t be ignored.”
