(Paris) Air pollution, indoors and outdoors, kills many people around the world, including children, and is now more deadly than smoking, according to a report published Thursday under the aegis of the UNICEF.
More than eight million people, including 700,000 children under the age of five, died in 2021 for reasons linked to air pollution, according to this work carried out by scientists from the American Health Effects Institute.
These results are based on the Global Burden Disease, a gigantic database containing data from more than 200 countries. However, it has not been published in a scientific journal.
At the level of mortality reported by the researchers, exposure to air pollution would now represent a greater threat than smoking or poor diet.
In most cases, deaths linked to air pollution are associated with the inhalation of fine particles known as PM2.5, less than 2.5 microns in diameter.
The authors of the report underline the increasingly deadly role of ozone pollution, fueled by episodes linked to global warming.
“We are seeing more and more regions of the world exposed to very brief and intense episodes of air pollution,” researcher Pallavi Pant, member of the Health Effects Institute, told AFP, referring to forest fires or severe heatwaves. .
When it comes to infant mortality, however, it is primarily the use of problematic fuels in cooking – coal, wood, etc. – that is the cause, particularly in Asia and Africa.
“We know we could solve these kinds of problems,” insisted Ms. Pant.
Efforts have already been made to facilitate access to safer cooking techniques, which has largely contributed to air-related child mortality having already fallen by more than half since 2000, according to the report.
