Pollution Causes 1 in 6 Deaths Worldwide
Worldwide, pollution causes just as many premature deaths as smoking, and far more fatalities than alcohol, drugs, HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, terrorism, or wars.Most of these early deaths — about 6.7 million each year — are caused by air pollution, according to a global pollution study published May 17 in The Lancet Planetary Health. In the United States alone, energy-related air pollution is responsible for about 53,000 premature deaths each year, a separate study, published May 16 in GeoHealth, concluded.“Shifting to clean energy sources can provide enormous benefit for public health in the near term while mitigating climate change in the longer term,” lead author of the U.S. study, Nicholas Mailloux, PhD, of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, said in a…