The world’s real pandemic is air pollution, heart specialists claimed today.
Pollution kills more people than wars, malaria and similar diseases, HIV or smoking, according to researchers from the European Society of Cardiology.
According to the analysis, air pollution was responsible for 8.8 million deaths in 2015, shortening life expectancy by three years.
About 75% of these deaths affect people over the age of 60, according to the report in Cardiovascular Research.
The lead researchers Professors Jos Lelieveld and Thomas Münzel, of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and the Department of Cardiology of the University Medical Centre Mainz in Mainz, Germany, describe this as an air pollution “pandemic."
Professor Lelieveld, who is also from the Cyprus Institute Nicosia, Cyprus, said: “It is remarkable that both the number of deaths and the loss in life expectancy from air pollution rival the effect of tobacco smoking and are much higher than other causes of death. Air pollution exceeds malaria as a global cause of premature death by a factor of 19; it exceeds violence by a factor of 16, HIV/AIDS by a factor of nine, alcohol by a factor of 45, and drug abuse by a factor of 60.”
Professor Münzel said: “In this paper we distinguished between avoidable, human-made air pollution and pollution from natural sources such as desert dust and wildfire emissions, which cannot be avoided. We show that about two-thirds of premature deaths are attributable to human-made air pollution, mainly from fossil fuel use; this goes up to 80% in high-income countries. Five and a half million deaths worldwide a year are potentially avoidable.
“It is important that policy-makers and the medical community realise that air pollution is an important risk factor for heart and blood vessel disease. It should be included as risk factor, along with smoking, diabetes and high blood pressure and cholesterol, in the guidelines of the European Society of Cardiology and the American Heart Association on the prevention of acute and chronic heart syndromes and heart failure.”
The findings were welcomed by the British Heart Foundation.
Jacob West, from the foundation, said: “This study presents further evidence that air pollution is a public health emergency that can worsen or shorten lives.
“Up to 11,000 deaths due to a heart attack or stroke are associated with toxic air each year in the UK. Current legal limits do not go far enough to drive the improvements we need to the quality of our air."
Jos Lelieveld et al. Loss of life expectancy from air pollution compared to other risk factors: a worldwide perspective. Cardiovascular Research 3 March 2020; doi:10.1093/cvr/cvaa025
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