Pollution claims 1.8 million lives in China, latest research says
Contaminated air and water killed more than nine million people globally in 2015, mostly in poor countries, report says
About 1.8 million Chinese died as a result of environmental pollution in 2015, according to a new worldwide study.
Produced by a team of 40 scientists – including one from Renmin University in Beijing – the report said that in that one year alone, at least nine million deaths, or 16 per cent of the global total, were pollution-related. The number was more than four times that attributed to Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined.
Published on Thursday in the British medical journal The Lancet, and designed to raise public awareness of the perils of pollution, the report, titled Commission on Pollution and Health, claims to be the most comprehensive study of its kind to date.
“For decades, pollution and its harmful effects on people’s health, the environment and the planet have been neglected both by governments and the international development community,” it said.
The vast majority of pollution-related deaths – about 92 per cent – happened in poor or middle-income countries, with India topping the list with 2.5 million in the year studied, the report said.
